Entering the regular season finale at Darlington Raceway last year, a lot of NASCAR fans probably assumed that all four Stewart-Haas Racing drivers would be missing out on the Cup Series playoffs in the team's final season of operation.
It was a fair assumption to make. The team's performance had declined steeply over their final two or three years, and none of their four drivers had particularly shown winning pace at any point during the 2024 season. All of them were in must-win scenarios, and facing the Southern 500, one of the most demanding races of the year, it was not going to be easy.
Chase Briscoe and the No. 14 team rose to the challenge, and that came with another unexpected perk that saw Briscoe thrust not only into the playoffs but into the TV spotlight.
"You’re celebrating in victory lane, and all of a sudden, now you’re in the playoffs, and literally there was a camera crew that just came up and was like ‘here’s a mic, put this on', and you’re like, ‘okay, that’s fine, put it on, what’s it for?’" Briscoe explained to Beyond the Flag.
As one of the 16 playoff drivers, Briscoe now had the unexpected opportunity to be a part of Season 2 of Netflix's Full Speed series.
"Full Speed kind of just follows the race for the championship, so you had to be a playoff driver, and for me, I was able to win the last race of the regular season, which punches your ticket into our NASCAR playoffs," he continued.
"They’re like, ‘oh, this is for Netflix 'Full Speed'. If you want to be on it, you’re going to be a part of it."
Given the all-access nature of the show, Briscoe had to talk it over with his wife, Marissa.
They decided to be a part of it.
"So it was one of those things where they were willing to obviously let me still talk it over, because my wife was obviously three or four weeks away from giving birth to twins," he said. "So there was a lot going on in our life, and yeah, we talked about it the next day and said ‘yeah, let's just let them have full access.’
"There were obviously going to be a lot of moments that are going to be special for our lives, and we're definitely not going to be as good as they are at filming it, so we might as well just let them do it!"
It was a new experience for Briscoe, whose Southern 500 win was his second career victory and subsequently punched his second playoff berth in three seasons.
"I would say it was probably 70% away from the race track, 30% at the race track," he said of the filming process for the show. "At the race track, they're still filming stuff. There are times when I probably just didn't even realize they were filming. After the race, there were obviously times when they would do sit-downs and stuff like that, but yeah, a lot of it was off-track.
"For us, there was a lot more going on off the race track as far as just the storyline of what was going on for our team and our car. The team I was driving for was shutting down at the end of the year, so you have that storyline, and then you throw in the fact that we were having twins in three or four weeks right in the middle of the playoffs, there were just a lot of things that were happening off the track, at least in my situation, where other guys it was more probably focused on-track.
"But yeah, it was crazy, the amount of stuff that Netflix films, and a lot of stuff that is probably really good and interesting just doesn’t get used because there’s obviously a tight window there from a time slot standpoint. So yeah, it was fun to be a part of the process and just get to know those guys."
As a NASCAR driver, Briscoe is used to the spotlight, and that doesn't just include the race track.
He has been involved in a number of sponsorship commercials before, but after having not made the 2023 playoffs and thus not taking part in Season 1, this side of TV was a whole new experience.
"I've done national television spots, commercial stuff," he added. "That's even crazy, too, being there for two days for 12 hours for a 30-second commercial, so I kind of had a decent understanding, but yet, definitely this side was totally different, just having cameras inside your house.
"We’ve done stuff before where it’s like a sitdown interview or something at your house, but never just going through your daily routine, like taking my kid to school or making him breakfast or having him brush his teeth. That’s just stuff I normally don’t have a camera right beside me while I’m doing it!
"So that part of it was definitely an adjustment, but you get used to it after a little bit. At work, at the race track, it’s normal. You don’t even really see them, but at the house, it’s definitely different."
He hasn't had an opportunity to see the whole season, which dropped on Wednesday, but he is looking forward to seeing everything the producers were able to do with the abundance of content he and his competitors could provide.
"Obviously with the twins and everything else, it's hard sometimes to be able to sit down and watch stuff, but we've watched two or three of the episodes. I haven't watched the full season yet, so I'm going to actually just tune in [Wednesday], I figured. Normally how I do Netflix is I'll watch it on the plane ride to the race track, so that'll be something I'll download and catch the final couple episodes."
It gave Briscoe a new appreciation for the work the producers do behind the scenes, given some of the work that needed to be done not only to appeal to the hard-core NASCAR fan, but to an audience that may not be super familiar with sport.
"First off, it's a challenge," he said. "I don't know how they even do it. But I think that all these Netflix sports documentaries do such a good job, whether it's Quarterback or Receiver or Full Swing, the list goes on and on. And I think Full Speed's the same, where you just get to see this kind of peek behind the curtain that you don't get to see on a week in and week out basis, when you're watching whatever the sport is.
"Being able to kind of humanize the athlete and let them kind of relate to the average fan, or even the person that's not even a fan of the sport, they can just relate to the person. I think Netflix does an incredible job of doing that. So it's exciting for my family and I to be a part of that. Hopefully people can relate to us and the craziness that is our life with three kids under three, but yeah, it's been a lot of fun, like I said, just to be a part of the process. Looking forward to seeing what everybody thinks of it."
Perhaps the closest comparison is Netflix's popular Formula 1 series, Drive to Survive.
Briscoe has had a chance to watch a few seasons of Drive to Survive, and he felt there were a healthy number of similarities and differences between that and Full Speed which could give the latter similar success.
"I haven't watched the most recent season of Drive to Survive," he admitted. "I would say I've seen definitely a couple of the seasons, but yeah, I feel like Drive to Survive is probably a little more on-track focused at times than Full Speed. I think they both still have that on-track element; if you're a race fan, you're going to enjoy it, because it does tell the story of the playoffs and the racing.
"I would just say there are more moving pieces on the F1 side, just because the teams are constantly changing. They switch drivers almost every single year, where with NASCAR, you just have more consistency. Typically the same guy kind of drives the same car for multiple years. So it really tells the story I feel like more of us off the race track."
Fans can watch Season 2 of Full Speed on Netflix now!