Briscoe on points positioning entering Kansas: ‘We’re flirting with disaster’

KANSAS City, Kan. -- Chase Briscoe entered The Chase presented by Mobil 1 riding high after a strong regular-season close. Three races into NASCAR’s postseason, the momentum has all but vanished. Briscoe, who was among the favorites to hoist the 2026 Bill France Cup, began the postseason as the No. 5 seed but has faded to ninth in the standings, now 87 points behind leader Kyle Larson. He knows timing is running out to make another late-season charge. RELATED: Kansas lineup | At-track photos “We are flirting with disaster, I would say, with two not ideal finishes,” Briscoe said on Saturday at Kansas Speedway. “Just have to win races. We’ve seen how big the winning races deal can really change the points.” Briscoe began The Chase by leading 30 laps and a sixth-place finish at Darlington Raceway. In a chaotic, 18-caution race at World Wide Technology Raceway, the No. 19 team was in position to snag a top 10 before fellow title threat Chase Elliott had a brake rotor explode entering Turn 1 on Lap 213. Briscoe was the innocent bystander and was clobbered into the wall by Elliott’s No. 9 car. He was credited with a 32nd-place finish. Last weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, Briscoe was hovering around the top five but slipped into the wall with six laps remaining and broke a toe link. That plummeted him down the running order, finishing 27th. Through three events, he has a 21.7 average finish, ranked 14th out of the 16 Chase drivers, only better than Elliott (22.7) and Ryan Blaney (24.0). “You budget in one mulligan, I feel like,” Briscoe noted. “In a perfect world, you don’t want to have any, and for us to have two with Talladega still in there is definitely not ideal. You have to win races. If you don’t win a race in these final 10 races, you’re not going to win the championship anyway. “We just need to win races. After last year winning three, we’ve only won one this year. We want to win more races. We will let the points be where they are and try to score as many as we can.” Briscoe vows to be more aggressive on restarts, despite knowing the risk versus reward. The James Small-led bunch may need to get even more creative on in-race strategy, knowing that points are a premium. This isn’t a new position for the No. 19 team. Briscoe stumbled out of the gates to begin the 2026 campaign and wasn’t frequently inside the top 20 in the overall standings until after the eighth race of the season at Bristol. Consistency was key as he climbed up the points, banking at least 34 markers in 12 of the final 19 races of the regular season. But while winning is at the top of the priority list, the No. 19 team can’t afford to lose out on valuable stage points compared to his opponents. “If you win the race but don’t get any stage points, it’s kind of a wash to those guys that get stage points,” he added. “It all has to come together. “St. Louis was wrong place, wrong time. But last week, it was self-inflicted with five to go. Frustrating from that standpoint.” Up next is 267 circuits at Kansas (Sun., 3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where Toyota has dominated the laps-led category in recent years. Since joining Joe Gibbs Racing in 2025, Briscoe has finished no worse than fourth in three starts at the “Sunflower State” track. The mission is clear for Kansas: chip away at that 87-point deficit, especially with his championship competition also having a strong history at Kansas. “This week, you have to take points away from the leader,” Briscoe stated. “You have to make that gap smaller. If it gets bigger after this week, you are in big, big, big trouble. Say tomorrow, we have a 75-point day, then you’re not back in it, but you still have a legitimate chance if you can win another race or two.”