Tire test giving Briscoe a chance to adapt his driving style to Gibbs car
Today at 01:14 PM
Goodyear’s tire test at Charlotte Motor Speedway might seem like a lot of dull repetition for a driver in terms of logging laps, but for Chase Briscoe, it’s a welcome opportunity.
Briscoe was perfectly content to spend two full days Tuesday and Wednesday logging laps with his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19, which is the Toyota representative at the test. As the tire company slings compound after compound at the teams for its intermediate notes, Briscoe is using the track time to continue familiarizing himself with his race car.
"The JGR cars drive way different than what I'm used to," Briscoe said. "So that was the biggest thing … was just (trying) to get myself more and more acclimated to how their cars drive. The tires, there's definitely a difference in each of them, but for me (Tuesday), I would say more of the focus was trying to get more and more comfortable and work on things that I can do inside the race car to change my driving style that fits their car setups more."
Briscoe is in his first season driving for Gibbs. It is his first time driving something other than a Ford at a NASCAR national series level. He started his national series career in 2017 in the Craftsman Truck Series. The previous four seasons at the Cup Series level before joining Gibbs saw Briscoe driving a Next Gen from the Stewart-Haas Racing stable.
"I've had to change my driving style a ton over the course of the last two or three weeks just trying to better suit how their cars are set up," Briscoe said. "It was nice coming off another mile and a half just two days ago."
Las Vegas Motor Speedway was the first intermediate race of the season after two superspeedway-style races, a road course, and the fast one-mile of Phoenix Raceway. The series makes another trip to an intermediate this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Those types of racetracks are the bread and butter of the Cup Series schedule, and success and speed at those venues are paramount to a fruitful season.
Briscoe finished 17th in Las Vegas after being penalized two laps when the left-rear wheel came off. Because of the resulting subsequent suspensions, the team will be without its primary jackman and rear tire changer for the next two Cup Series races. Toyota drivers have won three of the last five Cup Series races at Homestead-Miami.
The changes Briscoe has made will remain a mystery. All he would cop to, saying there are some secrets involved, is that he's had to change his whole approach to how he attacks a lap and a racetrack.
"How I approach going into the corner and what I try to focus on specifically with just keeping the minimum speed way higher," Briscoe said. "That's something that, in the past, my car just couldn't handle doing some of the things this car can do, as far as what I can do with how much throttle I can carry and even how I approach the corner. That's been something that was a learning curve, for sure, last weekend. And then (Tuesday) and even (Wednesday), that's something that I've really been trying to do better … replicate what the other JGR guys do because they obviously kind of have it figured out on mile-and-a-halfs.
"So, that's been something that, truthfully, I didn't necessarily anticipate when I moved over here, just how much different I would have to be doing stuff. But that's all part of trying to be better, right? It's trying to change what you're doing. I still think there's a certain extent of doing what comes natural is better, but JGR has won way more races than I have, so I'm just trying to do what I can to put ourselves in the best position."
