Chase Briscoe has everything to succeed with Joe Gibbs Racing
Today at 08:29 AM
When three-time Super Bowl head-winning coach Joe Gibbs sought after Chase Briscoe to fill his NASCAR team‘s vacant No. 19 Toyota for the 2025 season, the choice was a no-brainer.
Briscoe had opportunities to remain within the Ford camp. After all, Ford has been an instrumental part of his career, largely funding some of his rides as he progressed throughout the ranks. But chances to join a powerhouse organization like JGR don‘t come around often.
"The Joe Gibbs Racing opportunity is one in a million," Briscoe said. "It‘s an incredible opportunity, but my name would have never even been in the hat if it wasn‘t for Ford Motor Company. Ford took a chance on me at the end of 2016 and signed me to a driver development deal. They were incredible to me: they funded my racing and did everything they could to get me to the top. I feel like I‘m loyal to a fault at times, and probably the hardest thing that I‘ve had to do in my entire life was to go to the higher ups at Ford and tell them that I‘ve decided to go another direction."
Clearly, it wasn‘t an easy decision for Briscoe to join a new manufacturer. But he believes that getting in the JGR rotation is reaching one of the top two organizations in the sport. It‘s something that he couldn‘t turn down.
With the four-car Stewart-Haas Racing operation rebranding to a single-car team after the 2024 season finale at Phoenix Raceway, Briscoe got a head start on 2025 with JGR. He attended simulator sessions with new crew chief James Small. That‘s an advancement for the No. 19 team, as it missed out on ample time in the simulator over the past few seasons with Martin Truex Jr. living away from the NASCAR hub in Charlotte.
"James is excited to have someone that is there all the time," Briscoe stated. "Nothing against Martin, but he wasn‘t there a lot. Martin was at the point of his career where he didn‘t even live near Charlotte, so that‘s something really exciting for James is being able to go to the simulator. James hasn‘t even gone to the simulator in the last three years. For him to have a driver that can go to sim, I think he‘s really excited for that.
"It‘s exciting for me knowing how good the No. 19 team was and they weren‘t doing a lot of the things that other teams were doing in the sport. There is a lot of room to grow from the team standpoint, and there is a lot of room to grow for myself."
Filling the shoes of a former champion can be intimidating, but Briscoe has gotten to know Truex better in recent months. The duo spoke at the NASCAR Awards banquet in late November, as well as at the JGR shop while Truex was doing an autograph session.
Expectations are sky high for Briscoe in 2025. He believes the No. 19 team needs to win multiple races, something it‘s done just once in the last three seasons. Briscoe was able to win one race apiece in two of the last three seasons, despite SHR grappling to remain relevant.
"There is no secret that the JGR equipment is capable of winning races and battling for a championship," he said. "The expectation, for me, is way higher. If you go and don‘t perform, there is no excuse.
"The expectations are very high and when expectations are high, the pressure is high, too. It‘s going to be way different from what I‘ve been accustomed to over the course of my Cup career because the expectations haven‘t always been the highest because we were always on the struggle bus — to an extent — at SHR and that‘s not the case at JGR. The expectation is to win races and be in the Championship 4. If you don‘t do that, they are going to make a change."
Throughout the second half of the 2024 season, JGR went winless, with Christopher Bell scoring the organization‘s most recent triumph at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in June. Briscoe is hoping to take an immediate step forward and put his name near the top of the board weekly.
"At Stewart-Haas, I would have flashes of running well, but I wasn‘t consistently good," he noted. "That‘s something at JGR that I want to focus on, being that contender week in and week out and being in the mix, cranking out top five and top 10s, leading laps."
Briscoe was among the best cars in the Cook Out Clash before experiencing a mechanical woe. He has a best finish of third (2022) in four Daytona 500 starts.
