TALLADEGA, Ala. — Miss Alabama looked on, tiara and sash in place as she blended in amongst Joe Gibbs Racing’s celebrants, as the call went out in Talladega Superspeedway’s crowded Victory Lane. “Technical difficulties!” an emcee announced with a deprecating self-jab as attendants initially struggled to hoist the outsized horseshoe wreath of carnations around race winner Chase Briscoe’s neck.
The difficulty, however technical, was one of few glitches for Briscoe and company on a day when so much went so right.
The team and driver who had struggled so mightily on superspeedways finally cashed in at the most opportune moment, propelling Briscoe and the No. 19 team to a rousing YellaWood 500 victory and providing both with a shot at the NASCAR Cup Series championship in two weeks at Phoenix Raceway. It also produced a moment of team harmony for Toyota, which freight-trained its way to place five of the top eight finishers Sunday, making amends for two recent bouts of teammate turmoil that had threatened to disrupt its playoff goals.
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The triumph was also a major moment of validation, for Briscoe in the latest stop on his Cup Series journey and for the team that brought him in.
“Yeah, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like we were capable of doing it,” said Briscoe, in his first year with JGR after the breakup of his previous home at Stewart-Haas Racing. “That’s why I said even what I said at the beginning of the year: If I don’t go win, I’m never going to get hired again because the expectation is you have to go to JGR and win. If you can’t win in a JGR car, why would anybody hire you for another team? Glad that I’ve been able to I feel like prove my worth.
“To be in the Championship 4 is a huge accomplishment itself. We want to win the championship. But to be one of those elite guys is a pretty special feeling.”
The sense of fulfillment was shared by JGR’s No. 19 team, which went winless last year in Martin Truex Jr.’s final Cup Series campaign. Truex was notably 0-for-40 for his career at both Daytona and Talladega, and Briscoe’s superspeedway track record wasn’t exceptional, either — 0-for-9 at Talladega before Sunday’s breakthrough.
The burden of both dry spells weighed on No. 19 crew chief James Small, who felt some of the same make-or-break preseason pressures that Briscoe did. Enjoying their third win together this season offered Small some relief.
“I never lost belief in myself or my team,” Small said. “I always had the support of everybody back at JGR. I knew if we had this opportunity, it was going to take a little bit, but we were going to be a force to be reckoned with. I think you’ve seen that since Kansas (and) Charlotte. We’re consistently, in my opinion, the best team in the series. We scored more points than anybody, more poles, had the most points in the playoffs here. Now we’re going to Phoenix.”
Chris Gabehart, Joe Gibbs Racing’s sage competition director, said that the organization had faith in Briscoe’s abilities but that the team’s resurgence doesn’t end with the driver and crew chief. Before the season, JGR brought in another Stewart-Haas transfer in J.D. Frye to serve as the No. 19 car chief, then bolstered the team’s engineering staff around them.
Things didn’t click right away during Briscoe’s adjustment period after four seasons with the Stewart-Haas group, but even then, Gabehart had his hunches about how the No. 19 group might respond.
“I knew that team had the makeup of a real dangerous combination,” Gabehart told NASCAR.com. “They were all motivated, all knew kind of their careers were on the line. Let’s be real, and they’re all super-hungry to perform, and super-smart and a huge foundation underneath of them. So I honestly knew back in January — and you can ask any one of them, I told them — that this had all the makings of the real Cinderella story. I think safe to say, going to the final four, here they are.”
The cohesiveness didn’t end there. JGR specifically and Toyota generally have endured two high-profile instances of team discord during these playoffs. The first came in the Round of 12, when an agitated Denny Hamlin shoved aside teammate Ty Gibbs at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, setting off a lively dispute over how drivers outside of the playoff picture should race against the postseason-eligible. A variation of that debate flared one week later at Kansas Speedway, where Hamlin’s fender-scrubbing overtake of Toyota mate and 23XI Racing employee Bubba Wallace allowed Chevrolet’s Chase Elliott to scoot through for a demoralizing win.
Sunday, those fractures seemed to heal. Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron controlled the overtime restart for Chevrolet, and they were lined up nose-to-tail for the final lap with their own Championship 4 fates in the balance. Larson’s No. 5 Chevy ran out of fuel with half a lap remaining, and a three-car power move by Wallace, Briscoe and Gibbs consumed whatever hopes Byron had left.
MORE: Hendrick’s hopes unravel in OT | At-track photos: Talladega
Gibbs stayed glued to Briscoe’s back bumper the rest of the way, giving his teammate a crucial aerodynamic push that withstood any remaining challenges.
“Ty was the whole reason I won the race,” Briscoe said. “He was extremely committed to me from the get-go. Really did a good job of keeping me up tight to Bubba so I could keep pushing him along. When I made a move, Ty went with me. Was selfless in the fact that he’s going for his first win, could have easily tried to make a move, did something different. He pushed me to the win. An incredible team effort.”
Gabehart also took note.
“Maybe unsung by some, but not by me,” Gabehart told NASCAR.com, with a nod to Gibbs’ dedication. “I realized that the thing I’m so proud of is we had so many Toyotas up there at the end. And you know, when you get that many of them up there, if one drops the ball, the other one can pick it up. In this case, Ty knew what his mission was, Chase was aggressive, and we were able to pull it out. But that really is a testament to Toyota and JGR, 23XI, Legacy Motor Club. It doesn’t happen by accident. There’s a lot of work and effort that goes into this each and every weekend, and especially at speedway races. I’m just proud that we could finally get a speedway win for Toyota.”
The outcome meant that half of the Championship 4 field for the Phoenix finale is now set, and that Hamlin — Joe Gibbs Racing’s most senior driver, 20 years in — and Briscoe — a Year 1 JGR newbie — will be among that quartet. The organization has a chance to add a third driver to that group, with Christopher Bell vying for a title shot in Sunday’s Xfinity 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, Peacock, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, HBO Max), the Round of 8’s finale at Martinsville Speedway.
Phoenix already holds fond memories for Briscoe, who scored his first Cup Series victory at the 1-mile oval in the spring of 2022. In the most recent season finale there, Briscoe was brought to tears when his Stewart-Haas Racing team bid farewell in the organization’s final race. Two weeks ago, media obligations brought him back to the Arizona track, where he stood on the front straightaway and took a moment to reflect.
“I hadn’t done that since I won there,” Briscoe said. “I kind of thought how that day felt, winning my first Cup race. I didn’t think about it for a second. Next time you stand here, you might be a champion.”
