Racing Insights: Chase Briscoe’s biggest championship edge isn’t under the hood

Chase Briscoe has spent the past three weeks making Kyle Larson look, at the very least, catchable. Consecutive victories at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway (and nearly another one right before that at Kansas) have erased 58 points of Briscoe's standings deficit to the defending champ, and while the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota has certainly been fast, his biggest advantage lately may not have come from anything having to do with horsepower or pace. It's the five guys standing in the No. 19 pit stall. During one of his services on Sunday at Charlotte, Briscoe's crew changed four tires in 8.536 seconds, the fastest such stop in Racing Insights' records. It broke the record the team had established just two weeks earlier at Kansas Speedway. And it wasn't even the most consequential stop of Briscoe's Bank of America 400 victory. RELATED: The Chase Report | Cup Series standings Just four races remain in the 2026 Chase presented by Mobil 1, with Briscoe 65 points behind Larson's No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. The No. 19 crew is doing its part to make that deficit less daunting, one fraction of a second at a time. Let's dig into the numbers, courtesy of Racing Insights.

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At Kansas, Briscoe's crew delivered four-tire stops of 8.576 and 8.616 seconds, the two fastest on record at the time. At Charlotte, it went even faster. The three quickest recorded Cup stops per Racing Insights now belong to the No. 19, all from the past three races. Six of the 10 fastest four-tire stops during The Chase came from Briscoe's team, too. But here's the number that might matter even more. During the regular season, just 8% of the team's competitive four-tire stops clocked in under nine seconds. Through six Chase races, that figure has climbed to an almost absurd 41% -- more than double the rate of any other team. Only 13 teams have managed even one sub-nine-second stop during that span. Nor has the speed come at the expense of reliability. Briscoe's team has gone 15 consecutive races without a pit-crew mistake, the longest active streak among Chase contenders. Flawless and fast? That's a dangerous combo. Veteran rear-tire changer Lee Cunningham -- part of a crew that also includes front changer AJ Rosini, jackman Caleb Dirks, carrier CJ Bailey and fueler Matt Tyrrell -- offered a glimpse after Briscoe's Chicagoland win in July. "It always seems to take us a little while to jell," Cunningham told NASCAR.com's Zack Albert. Apparently it has, and the wait was worth it. After Charlotte, Briscoe's crew now leads the season-long pit-crew rankings for the first time this year. Even after the Indiana native's close-but-no-smoked-brisket P4 at Kansas, crew chief James Small recognized its progress. "Those guys are executing at a super high level," Small told NASCAR.com's Dustin Albino, joking that with this group in 2024, "maybe Martin (Truex Jr.) would still be racing." [caption id="attachment_528902" align="aligncenter" width="1300"]David Jensen | Getty Images[/caption] What's kind of scary, however, is that the record-setting Charlotte stop came on Lap 167. The race-changing one arrived later. It suggests there's even more in the tank if and when the pressure mounts even higher, and they need to dig down even deeper. Christopher Bell had been the car to beat, winning Stage 2 and leading 93 laps. But when a caution with about 60 laps remaining brought the leaders down pit road, Briscoe's crew delivered another blistering stop: 8.696 seconds. Briscoe emerged ahead of Bell, took the lead for the restart and held it for the final 61 laps. Bell nearly caught him at the line after some contact between the two, losing by 0.029 seconds in the closest Cup finish of 2026. "We just lost the lead on pit road, man," Bell's crew chief, Adam Stevens, told NASCAR.com. The record stop made history. The other one helped win the race. Neither is likely to be the most consequential stop of the year at this rate. Briscoe collected 68 points to Bell's 53. Those extra points are vital when the driver you're chasing keeps piling them up himself. Even still, perhaps the most revealing comparison isn't between Briscoe and Larson or even Bell, however. It's between Briscoe and teammate Denny Hamlin. Hamlin entered The Chase as the No. 1 seed, 55 points ahead of Larson. Six races later, he's 49 behind, and the No. 11 team's pit-road performance illustrates part of that 104-point reversal. The No. 11 crew ranked fifth during the regular season, gaining a net of five positions on pit road. In The Chase, it's fallen to 20th, with three recorded mistakes and a net loss of 40 positions. The No. 19 gang, conversely, ranks first among Chase teams, with no mistakes and 20 positions gained. That's a 60-position difference in cumulative pit-road gains and losses between two teams from the same organization. [table id=863 /] The stop averages tell another story -- on clean four-tire stops, Briscoe holds a three-tenths advantage, 9.36 seconds to Hamlin's 9.66. Factor in mistakes, and Hamlin's overall average slips to 10.15 seconds, while Briscoe stays at 9.36. It's not just raw speed, either. It's keeping that speed from getting swallowed by mistakes. This, of course, raises the question -- will Briscoe's bunch remain perfect or will the inevitable mistake bite them? Bell's crew ranks seventh, with two mistakes and 11 net positions lost. Larson's group unsurprisingly ranks second, with no mistakes and five positions gained. Ryan Blaney's crew, meanwhile, has climbed from 32nd in the regular season to fifth in The Chase after a personnel change. MORE: Blaney, Cindric react to swap: 'Best chance to win the championship' These numbers don't fully explain the standings -- strategy and race circumstances matter, too. But they reveal an advantage Briscoe's closest competitors haven't matched; one that has clearly buoyed his breakout. Remember this weekend, Phoenix Raceway (Sun., 3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) has a habit of rewarding the team that gets its late-race pit decisions right and punishing the ones that don't. Last November, Hamlin led 208 laps before losing track position on pit road in the closing moments and finishing sixth in yet another championship crusher. In March, Bell led 176 laps but dropped from first to eighth after taking four tires during a late caution. He recovered to second behind Blaney, who took two. Those were strategic calls, not simply faster or slower stops. Still, they illustrate how quickly being the fastest car can cease to matter as much if you're buried in the field after a long or incorrect pit stop. Briscoe's own history at Phoenix is an added wrinkle to how this weekend will be impacted, too. His first Cup victory came there in March 2022, yet his last four finishes, however, are 29th, 35th, 18th and 37th -- a 30.0 average. Larson has finished fourth or better in six of his last seven Phoenix races. That leaves the No. 19 team little margin for error. Luckily, they may not need it.