Briscoe Banks Enough Fuel

Chase Briscoe celebrates his win in The Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway. (Matthew O'Haren/Imagn Images)

The Great American Getaway 400:

Chase Briscoe saved enough fuel on Sunday evening in the waning laps of The Great American Getaway 400 to capture his first win of 2025, first win in the 19 car for Joe Gibbs Racing, and locked himself into the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. Briscoe staved off a hard charging, faster, and likely all around better car in teammate Denny Hamlin to take the checkered flag on Sunday. The win also marked the third of Briscoe's career and likely adds a little comfort to his seat in the 19 car for future seasons.

The race got off to a wet start: it was delayed for several hours due to rain in the area. And while that was a bummer, Amazon Prime did a phenomenal job filling the delayed start to the race with coverage, interviews, and rehashing their previous four races of their coverage this season (Amazon Prime will be dearly missed until next season). But the race went green around 4:30 p.m. EST and Denny Hamlin took off from his pole position and essentially went unchallenged for the entirety of Stage 1 to capture the first green and white checkered flag of the day. Of course, it is Pocono and fuel strategy came into play late in Stage 1 with teams scheming to get all important track position for Stage 2 and beyond. Things did heat up in Stage 2 with folks on varying strategies and a couple of on track incidents. Our first caution for cause came at Riley Herbst's expense when his brakes failed going into turn 1. Unfortunately for 23XI (and Michael McDowell) Riley wasn't the only one with brake issues. Our next two cautions came due to debris and contact with the wall from Bubba Wallace and McDowell. A subsequent restart from the second of these cautions saw Kyle Busch bust his ass and take out some competitors in the tunnel turn, and at this point I was sure we were in for a cluster of a race. We had bang bang bang cautions and I was worried we were going to devolve into something embarrassing with drivers getting aggressive and knowing we were pushing the "darkness clock" to get the race in in the Pocono Mountains. Thankfully, we did not spiral into the abyss of abysmal driving and had a straight up fuel strategy banger until the end. It was briefly interrupted by a spinning SVG that set up the 30-lap dash to the checkered flag. At this point, with Steve Letarte being on top of things, I was confident that Hamlin was going to win due to Briscoe's error of not being stopped long enough for fuel on his last stop. However, as we saw when the checkered flag fell, Briscoe managed his mistake masterfully, saved enough fuel, held off faster cars of Hamlin and Ryan Blaney to cruise to his first victory of 2025. While I was bamboozled that Briscoe, while saving fuel, was able to hold off Hamlin (and this partially a condemnation of the car) Briscoe executed perfectly with the circumstances at hand. For this, he should be applauded and congratulated on his win. It was impressive. I cannot hate this race simply for the fact I am not a huge fan of the car. It was still compelling (bravo to Amazon Prime's coverage) and I was still on edge waiting to see if Briscoe could recover and pull it off. He did; I was impressed; and that should be celebrated. Congrats to Briscoe and his entire 19 team at JGR!

Next up we welcome TNT back to the NASCAR world with their coverage for the Cup Series this weekend as NASCAR kicks off their Inaugural In Season Challenge this weekend for the Cup Series. But before we do that, we have the Xfinity Series kicking off the weekend Friday evening at 7:30 p.m. EST on The CW with the Focused Health 250 at EchoPark Speedway (formerly known as Atlanta Motor Speedway). The Craftsman Truck Series takes to a new track (Lime Rock Park) on Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. EST on FOX with the LiUNA! 150. And the Cup Series headlines the weekend from EchoPark Speedway Saturday night under the lights at 7 p.m. EST on TNT with the Quaker State 400.

Lime Rock/Atlanta Picks:

Trucks = Jordan Taylor

Xfinity = Austin Hill

Cup = Austin Cindric