In a race that turned out to be full of mistakes and misfortune for several NASCAR Cup Series Chase drivers, Chase Briscoe swept the stages, led a race-high 135 of the 267 laps, and won his seventh career Cup race this past Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
While his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin fumbled his chance to gain the upper hand in the title race and continued a concerning trend of losing ground in the points battle dating back to the middle of August, it was a breath of fresh air for Briscoe.
For starters, his title run has been plagued by finishes of 27th or worse at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway and Bristol Motor Speedway. Flash forward to the fourth race of the Chase at Kansas Speedway, and it was another one that got away, as Briscoe appeared to be on his way to a win after passing Kyle Larson with 30 laps remaining, only to give the lead back up with seven laps to go before settling for fourth.
After a 75-point haul at Las Vegas, just one shy of the maximum in a given race, Briscoe moved up to sixth in the standings. However, he still sits 84 points behind Larson and has his work cut out for him if he wants to have a legitimate shot at his first Cup title.
Chase Briscoe cannot afford any more mistakes in title pursuit
The 84-point deficit is just barely more than a full race (76), but if we go back to the missed opportunity at Kansas, it becomes even clearer how costly the end result in the midwest could end up being if Briscoe is unable to make a run at the title.
When you consider the 20 points Larson would have lost and Briscoe would have gained with the win, along with the two additional spots that Briscoe lost after he was passed for the lead, that's a 42-point swing. If you take that away from the current 84-point hole he finds himself in now, he would be a much more manageable 42 points behind Larson with five races to go.
Granted, you can also point to him being an innocent bystander at Gateway when Chase Elliott blew a tire inside of him and took him out of contention there, or his 27th-place finish at Bristol one week later. With a total of 21 points between those two races, he already faced a huge hurdle in a 10-race championship fight.
Briscoe also entered the Chase 45 points behind after the reset, but even though he has lost another 39 points since then, it is still much better than the season-long deficit he would face (-265) if the points had not been reset at all.
Looking ahead, there is no denying that Briscoe has become a real title problem at the Chase's midpoint. Although a crash left him with a 34th-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, he was second, third, and fourth in the first three stages and should be a threat for the win again as the Charlotte oval makes its return to the fall for the first time since 2017.
Looking past that, Briscoe has previously won a Cup race at Phoenix Raceway (March 2022) and Talladega Superspeedway (October 2025), in addition to owning a best finish of fourth at Martinsville Speedway and winning a race at Homestead-Miami Speedway in both the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series and the Craftsman Truck Series.
What hurts the most for Briscoe, and even the rest of the field for that matter, is how Larson was still able to stretch his points lead at Las Vegas, despite dealing with some adversity of his own. With an ill-handling car to begin the race, crew chief Cliff Daniels kept his driver on pit road for an extended stop that put him a lap down in stage 1, but Hamlin's decision to pit from the lead during the first caution gifted him that lap back and paved the way for Larson to salvage a runner-up finish and 36-point day.
It was a gamble that might have won Larson a third championship and second straight, especially if you also consider the track-record 18 cautions he overcame to win at Gateway and the issues he faced at Bristol and Las Vegas, only to finish runner-up at both of them.
Briscoe answered the call when the rest of the field did not in Sin City, but it still might be too little, too late unless he can maximize his stage points, win at least one more race, and get some help from those ahead of him in the standings.
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