Chase Briscoe feels ‘so much better’ about his Talladega victory after Martinsville misfortune

Chase Briscoe found a silver lining after his DNF at Martinsville Speedway. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver suffered an apparent engine failure in the final stage.

Briscoe had a top-10 start during Sunday's Xfinity 500. The No.19 driver fell back in the first stage, but found a P6 result in Stage 2. Briscoe was running in 14th when he encountered engine issues on lap 295. He promptly dove into the pits and retired from the race.

Denny Hamlin followed suit when he faced similar problems on lap 334. 23XL Racing's Riley Herbst was yet another casualty of the engine trouble. All three Toyota drivers occupied the bottom rung of the running order.

Coming off a win at Talladega, Briscoe can breathe a sigh of relief since his championship spot is guaranteed. Noting the same, the Hoosier native shared a cheeky post on X, writing,

"That win last weekend feels so much better now 😅"

In a post-race interview with NBC Sports, Chase Briscoe tried to explain the turn of events.

"No indication. I was just running around there. I felt really good about coming here and where we were at and racing with (Kyle) Larson there and went to upshift and something happened. I’m not really sure, it’s unfortunate. We’ll go on to next week and that won’t matter anyways,” he said.

Denny Hamlin, meanwhile, acknowledged the risk of running into the same issue at Phoenix Raceway. Notably, this is Hamlin's first championship race in the Next Gen Era.

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Chase Briscoe looks back on his announcement as a JGR driver

Chase Briscoe recently reflected on silencing his critics after a breakout year with JGR. The 30-year-old went over the initial perception that followed his signing with the championship-winning team.

"I definitely think that whenever it got announced, there's a lot of people scratching their head and, whether it was fans or even, probably industry people too, right? And for Coach [JGR team owner, Joe Gibbs] now to have it all kind of come to fruition, I don't know if he thought it was going to go as good as it's gone this year and with a championship four birth, but certainly I would think he has to feel good about it, right? It was a huge risk," he said in a podcast episode of Rubbin' is Racing.

Chase Briscoe launches his title bid alongside Denny Hamlin, William Byron and Kyle Larson. Christopher Bell missed the final four after Larson finished ahead at Martinsville. However, the No.20 driver was 'content' with the result. He believes the playoff format finally produced a deserving group of title contenders.

That said, all four drivers are multi-race winners this season, but Byron heads into the finale with the most momentum after his Martinsville victory.

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Edited by Vignesh Kanna