Briscoe still trying to find his groove with JGR machinery
Yesterday at 05:01 PM
The partnership between Chase Briscoe and Joe Gibbs Racing gets better every weekend.
As things settled in with the NASCAR Cup Series, which has completed a quarter of the season, Briscoe feels the same is occurring within the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops team. He took over the car this season, guided by James Small, and after an early-season penalty overturned on appeal, it's been far quieter in recent weeks.
There is still plenty to do going forward.
"I still feel like we're not 100 percent," Briscoe told RACER at Talladega Superspeedway. "I would be curious to see what James (Small) feels. I haven't asked him where he feels like we're at, but I know for me, I don't feel like I'm firing on all cylinders yet. I still feel like I'm learning things about the car every week, and even with James and me leading into the weekend. We're doing better and better on the sim and how we adjust for it.
"Been encouraged with the speed we've had for how far away I feel like we are from being our best. That part is really exciting, but I'm still a couple of weeks out from really having a good understanding. We have a lot of mile-and-a-halfs coming up in the next three or four weeks. I feel like have been the biggest struggle, just trying to feel how different the car drives. I'm going to get a lot of practice here coming up."
Briscoe is 13th in the championship standings with four top-10 finishes. The team finished fourth at the most recent event, Bristol Motor Speedway. It tied their season-best, which Briscoe also earned at Homestead-Miami Speedway and in the season-opening Daytona 500.
Once Sunday's race at Talladega Superspeedway is complete, the series has three points-paying intermediate races ahead with Texas, Kansas, and Charlotte. In June, there are races at Nashville Superspeedway and Michigan International Speedway. Of course, the intermediates, or mile-and-a-half tracks, are the bread and butter of the season.
Briscoe didn’t expect to find a different feel at those racetracks when switching teams, but his Toyota behaves differently from the Ford he drove for four seasons at Stewart-Haas Racing. Of all the things he's had to learn and adjust to, the car is still one he hasn't figured out.
"On the mile-and-a-halfs," he said. "The short track stuff, there are some little things that are different from SHR, but the mile-and-a-halfs are where the biggest difference is, and we just haven't run a lot of them yet this year. Getting to do the Charlotte Goodyear test (in March) was huge but I don't feel like I've got to race around a lot of guys on mile-and-a-halfs yet, because in Las Vegas we were four laps down with the tire penalty and I was kind of riding around in the back a lot of the day…"
Briscoe is not the lowest Gibbs driver in the point standings, but he's watched two of his teammates win races. Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin have combined for five wins in nine races.
The balance of wanting to give his team a grace period of adjusting to their new partnership together and realizing that same potential is tricky.
"I want to win, especially when your teammates have been winning," Briscoe said. "It's like, well, if they're winning, we can win, too. I feel like for us, even two weeks ago at Bristol, our car was fast enough at the end of the race to win. It just takes a little bit of time for us to find that balance as we're making adjustments through practice and the race.
"So I know it's going to get there and we're going to have opportunities to win races. It's just frustrating when your teammates are winning, but it is still very, very new and there are a lot of things that are different that I'm trying to get acclimated to."
