If Chase Briscoe makes it to the championship race at Phoenix, he has more than just the competition to worry about.
Briscoe would want his whole family to be there. So that means his wife Marissa, their son Brooks (who turns 4 next month) and their baby twins Cooper and Collins (who turn 1 next month).
“I cannot imagine that flight,” Briscoe said. “Maybe I can see if coach [Joe Gibbs] would let us all fly on his plane or something so it’s a little bit easier and everybody on the team plane or the commercial plane doesn’t have to hear kids screaming the whole time.”
Chase Briscoe’s son Brooks celebrates atop the car after Chase’s win at the Cook Out Southern 500.
Briscoe wasn’t wishing anything ill on his team owner. And he certainly isn’t thinking much beyond the current playoff round. He was asked the question as the playoffs started because, as he says about his life in the last year:
“You go from man-to-man to zone real quick,” Briscoe said.
As the father of baby twins, Briscoe doesn’t need to find something to make him forget that he is on the bubble with two races left in the Cup quarterfinal round (Round of 12). He is 12 points ahead of Ross Chastain for the final spot with races remaining this weekend at Kansas and the next weekend at the Charlotte road course.
It takes a great team to be successful on the track and off the track. Briscoe is in his first year at Joe Gibbs Racing as the replacement for Martin Truex Jr. with the James Small-led team. Briscoe already has set a career high with two wins this year, 12 top-fives and 16 top-10s. His average finish of 12.6 is nearly five spots better than in any other season.
At home, Briscoe credits Marissa with running the show, and he certainly has learned that raising twins is different.
“When you have one, you can just spend all your time with just that one,” Briscoe said. “When you have three [young children], at some point, one of them is going to be crying or whining about something.
“It’s just a matter of if it’s one of them or two of them or all three of them. One of them always is needing something or needing to eat or change of a diaper or whatever it is.”
A stylish entrance for father and son.
Briscoe feels they have found a good routine, getting them to bed at a reasonable time. Brooks is at a point where he doesn’t want to go to bed, but so far, Briscoe said he doesn’t feel as if he is worn out.
Maybe part of that is watching Cooper (a girl) and Collins (a boy) grow.
“Seeing how different they are with them being boy and a girl, and their personalities and their demeanors, and watching them how different they are already at different things,” Briscoe said before the playoffs began. “Our little girl speaks really well and hand-eye coordination is really well, but she can’t walk. Cooper, our boy, is already standing up and practically walking but he doesn’t really talk or do anything like that.
“Just seeing that side of things has been fun, just seeing how different they are. When it’s just one, you don’t have anything to compare it. Where now you can kind of see their differences. So that’s been very unique part of twins, for sure.”
And then there is the predictable challenge. The entire family went to Daytona in August, and they tried going to the beach the day before the race.
“We all went to Daytona and thought it’d be a great idea to go to the beach,” Briscoe said. “That lasted about 15 minutes, and that was just disaster.
“They were all eating sand and screaming.”
In other words, Briscoe is used to a little chaos, whether on the track or at home.
“It’s a distraction just because you’ve got so much other stuff going on, and you forget about everything else because you’re just focused on your kids especially,” Briscoe said. “I’m like, a total helicopter parent. … I’m freaking out making sure that everybody’s good.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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