by Patrick Zier | Jul 18, 2025 |
There were, quite honestly, questions about whether Chase Briscoe could cut it. He was making the jump from Stewart-Haas to Joe Gibbs Racing, one of the two premier Cup teams in NASCAR, and for Briscoe, it wasn’t really a jump. It was a giant leap.
Not that Briscoe lacked talent. In 2021, he dominated NASCAR’s Xfinity Series, a stepping stone to Cup, with nine wins, most ever by a Ford driver and second only to Sam Ard’s 10 victories in 1983, the modern record. So he could drive.
But Briscoe hit Stewart-Haas in 2022 while he was on the way up and they were on the way down; he was a bright young star driving for a burned out team.
Stewart-Haas became a rudderless ship, drifting aimlessly in the NASCAR Cup Series until it finally hit a rocky shoal where if floundered and sank in 2024.
Briscoe, though, managed to stay afloat. He won two races over the three-year period he was at Stewart-Haas including Darlington’s iconic Southern 500 in 2024, the last race a Stewart-Haas car would ever win.
Then, with everybody at Stewart-Haas scrambling and looking for ways to save their careers, Briscoe caught a break. Martin Truex, one of the stabilizing forces on Gibbs’ team, retired after the 2024 season and Gibbs needed somebody to replace him.
Gibbs, a former Super Bowl-winning coach with the now Washington Commanders, then the Redskins, has always believed that how a person fits into a group is just as important as what he brings to it.
And he passed on some more experienced, more seasoned candidates in favor of Briscoe because he liked the way Briscoe fit, the way he approached racing and what he brought to the table in that regard.
“If you look at Chase, if you look at his background, he’s paid a huge price to be able to get here,” Gibbs said as reported by NASCAR.com. “If you look at the years he spent sleeping on people’s couches and everything it shows you again what a hard climb it is to get to the Cup level. He just deserves so much credit,” Gibbs commented.
Still, this would not be an easy transition, as Briscoe quickly found out. “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever gone through in my career,” Briscoe said on NASCAR.com after securing his first win for JGR at Pocono. “The only similarity, I would say, is being teammates with Kevin Harvick (at Stewart-Haas).
“But even when I was there, Kevin wasn’t really winning either,” Briscoe continued. “The expectation was always there with Kevin but it wasn’t necessarily guys winning week in and week out.
“At Stewart-Haas, it honestly felt like you shocked the world when you won,” Briscoe said. “Here, it doesn’t feel like that because they win a lot. It’s definitely been an adjustment for me. Even just racing with teammates that are winning has been an adjustment for me. It’s definitely been a big learning curve.
“It’s crazy now looking back on it, what I was racing against every single weekend,” Briscoe continued. “It’s mind-blowing how the cars drive, the preparation leading into the week. Nothing against SHR, but now, being inside the walls of JGR, it’s mind-blowing the level they compete at.”
Briscoe noticed the difference between Stewart-Haas and JGR in the first race of the year, The Clash, at Winston-Salem, N.C. “When we went to Bowman Gray (the track in Winston-Salem) I ran the first five laps of practice and I’m like ‘Holy smokes, this is unlike anything I’ve ever driven before,'” Briscoe said.
“It took me a long time, longer than I would have liked, I would say up until Charlotte qualifying I was always underdriving the car,” Briscoe commented. “I am so used to having to lift in certain spots because the car couldn’t take it.
“But the last month (after the Charlotte race) I feel like I finally have been getting used to what this car is capable of, how hard I can push it,” Briscoe said.
“It feels normal now, where at the beginning of the year it felt so foreign, how far I was able to drive it into the corner, how hard I could pick up the gas. Everything was the opposite of what I’ve been used to,” Briscoe added.
“From where he came from, there wasn’t much accountability,” James Small, Briscoe’s crew chief, explained. “Nobody was holding his feet to the fire. That’s probably been a big wake-up call for him.”
“I mean I read the internet,” Briscoe said. “People are like ‘Why would you put that guy in the car?’ Even when I won three poles in a row, not winning the race, people are trashing you,” he remarked.
“I knew we were more than capable, I knew myself that I was capable. But you never really know until you do it,” Briscoe declared. “It’s certainly nice to get that monkey off our back.”
Winning at Pocono showed Briscoe can get the job done, but he had already proven that at Stewart-Haas. What he has to understand is that at JGR, it’s assumed you’re going to win. The difference between Stewart-Haas and JGR is that it’s expected you’ll do it more than once.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Dover: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Chase Briscoe, 3-Kyle Larson. Last year’s winner at Dover: Hamlin. Top five at Dover last year: 1-Hamlin, 2-Larson, 3-Martin Truex, 4-Kyle Busch, 5-Chase Elliott.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Sonoma picks: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Ty Gibbs, 3-Michael McDowell. Sonoma winner: van Gisbergen. OGS season record: 8-7.
OGS competition index top 10: 1-Hamlin 384 points, 2-Larson 302, 3-Christopher Bell 279, 4-William Byron 237, 5-van Gisbergen 224, 6-Briscoe 215, 7-Ryan Blaney 214, 8-Elliott 122, 9-Gibbs 112, 10-Ross Chastain 104.
OGS competition index top 10 on short tracks (tracks similar to Dover): 1-Hamlin 155, 2-Larson 115, 3-Bell 103, 4-Bubba Wallace 30, Gibbs 30; 6-Elliott 25, 7-Josh Berry 24, 8-Briscoe 20, 9-Blaney 15, 10-Joey Logano 12.
by Patrick Zier | Jul 11, 2025 |
Shane van Gisbergen is currently tearing it up on NASCAR’s street and road courses but, at least right now, he couldn’t win a race on an oval if his racing life depended on it. And it does.
Welcome to the new NASCAR, where a 36-year-old New Zealander who knows next to nothing about running on an oval, the traditional foundation of the sport, can surge to the top of stock car racing by being better at turning left and right than any of his peers.
He is so good, in fact, that some are ready to crown him as NASCAR’s best ever even though he has only run four road races in his very brief NASCAR career (he did, however, win three of them).
Until recently, NASCAR has never been about road racing. And back in the day, it was even kind of looked down on by the drivers who, for the most part, came out of the rural South and engaged in the rough-and-tumble, get-out-of-my-way competition that got everything going.
There was only one road race, at Riverside, Calif, and it led into the Daytona 500 which, at that time, was not the first race of the season. When Riverside closed, in 1988, Sonoma and Watkins Glen were added to the schedule and until recently they were the only two road races NASCAR ran on a regular basis.
This year there are six, including two in a row, Chicago last week and Sonoma this Sunday. And van Gisbergen, who won Chicago, will be a heavy favorite to win at Sonoma. And he will be favored again at Watkins Glen, which is Aug. 10th.
But after that, van Gisbergen’s problems begin. If he wins at Sonoma and the Glen, he could head into the playoffs with four wins, all on road courses, and that does not bode well for his chances at a championship.
The 10-race playoff is an elimination derby, with 16 drivers competing. Three are eliminated after the first three races, three more after races four through six and three more after races seven through nine, leaving four eligible for the championship in the final race at Phoenix.
And nine of those races are on ovals. There is a race on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course after the first elimination round, but van Gisbergen isn’t going to get that far because he simply isn’t comfortable enough running ovals to compete.
His two best oval finishes this year are a 14th at Charlotte (on the regular track) and an 18th at Michigan, and he wasn’t a factor in either race.
“That’s why I’m here, I guess (to win on road courses),” van Gisbergen said as reported by NASCAR.com after the Chicago race. “Justin (team owner Justin Marks) took a massive chance on me to bring me over (from New Zealand), and as I’ve said many times, these races are like a holiday to me. It’s the ovals where I’m really focused on getting better and better,” van Gisbergen added.
“I think it’s a unique project with Shane,” Marks commented after the race in Chicago, also on NASCAR.com. “I wouldn’t do this – we wouldn’t be doing this if we thought we could go win road courses and we know we’re not going to run that good on ovals because he’s never done it before,” Marks continued. “At this level of the game, you have to be a complete package.
“For his level of intelligence and how he studies and how he adapts and how he learns, there’s a real opportunity here for him to figure the ovals out and get fast at the ovals and be a complete Cup driver,” Marks said.
“I think we’ve seen him coming that way just in the last month and a half. He’s pretty consistently top 20 now on the ovals and when he started running he was kind of like 30th, 32nd and I think that development is just going to continue.
“I think when you think about the project, we’ve got somebody who’s talented and that we can make a Cup driver out of, and while he learns, in the meantime, we can win a ton of road courses and punch that ticket to the playoffs and give our sponsors a ton of return for their investment,” Marks declared.
At 36, van Gisbergen is much older then the normal driver who moves up to Cup, and maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks. Just not this year, though.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Sonoma: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Ty Gibbs, 3-Michael McDowell. Last year’s winner at Sonoma: Kyle Larson. Top five at Sonoma last year: 1- Larson, 2-McDowell, 3-Chris Buescher, 4-Chase Elliott, 5-Ross Chastain.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport competition index picks: 1-Christopher Bell, 2-van Gisbergen, 3-Elliott. Chicago winner: van Gisbergen. OGS season record: 7-7.
OGS competition index top 10 after 15 races: 1-Denny Hamlin 384 points, 2-Larson 301, 3-Bell 269, 4-William Byron 237, 5-Ryan Blaney 214, 6-Chase Briscoe 175, 7-van Gisbergen 149, 8-Gibbs 112, 9-Chastain 102, 10-Tyler Reddick 98.
OGS competition index top 10 on road courses (tracks similar to Sonoma): 1-van Gisbergen 149 points, 2-Bell 95, 3-Reddick 65, 4-Gibbs 51, 5-Elliott 50, 6-Byron 40, 7-Kyle Busch 38, 8-McDowell 27, 9-Hamlin 20, Alex Bowman 20.
by Patrick Zier | Jul 4, 2025 |
It was not a race, it was a demolition derby. It’s what usually happens when you take NASCAR’s three superspeedways – Daytona, Talladega and more recently Atlanta – bunch everybody up and put drivers in cars that have no ability to pass because of rigid rules that don’t allow teams to make any modifications to the equipment.
What you end up with is a parade, with everybody running nose-to-tail until somebody makes a mistake. Then what you get is the big one, the big wreck, cars spinning crazily out of control, banging into each other until there is little left but mangled metal and smoking engines.
It happened again last week in Atlanta, when Denny Hamlin bumped into John Hunter Nemechek on lap 69 of the Quaker State 400, sending Nemechek into somebody else who hit somebody else who was trying to brake to avoid getting caught up in the mess that eventually collected 23 cars. Race over for those guys.
NASCAR Cup drivers have come to expect this. They don’t know where it will happen or when it will happen, they just know it’s likely to happen. And they know there’s nothing they can do about it.
And they have become immune to it. There is no more anger, no more frustration. This is what NASCAR has allowed superspeedway racing to become, so drivers go in expecting to wreck and hoping, somehow, to avoid the mishaps and simply finish the race. That, in itself, represents victory.
Denny Hamlin, as quoted by NBC sports: “I was on Nemechek’s bumper and he was on the bumper of somebody else. Some zigged, some zagged, most crashed,” he stated matter-of-factly. Hamlin would finish 31st.
Joey Logano, equally as nonchalant: “Cars are sideways and you get on the brakes and everyone is just running into each other,” he said resignedly. It’s just a superspeedway wreck.” Logano would finish 36th.
William Byron: “They all stacked up and at that point, I went right a little bit. The wreck was already happening and I just kind of got shoved into it.” Byron would finish 37th.
For its part, NASCAR has seemed to get a little bit complacent about what’s happening on it’s superspeedways. The sport has made tremendous strides in safety since the death of Dale Earnhardt and officials have been watching these cars wreck and everybody walk away since then.
They are trying to build a new base of younger fans who have short attention spans and like excitement, and the big wrecks are exciting, so why not give them what they want?
Of course you have to wonder if this younger generation is made up of real fans. Real fans don’t want to see their favorite driver eliminated from contention, through no fault of his own, by the big wreck.
This was hammered home after the Atlanta wreck fest. NASCAR, which has been pushing more and more gimmicks to attract viewers, has a million dollar playoff going in which drivers are seeded and paired against each other over a five week period with the eventual winner taking home the cash.
Hamlin, the No. 1 seed, was up against Ty Dillon, seeded 32nd and last, at Atlanta. Because Hamlin wrecked, Dillon moves on to the next round at Chicago this weekend and Hamlin is out.
Corresponding to the playoff for the drivers, NASCAR also has one for fans, who howled with disapproval when drivers like Hamlin, Logano and Byron were knocked out in the first round.
This simply drives home how ridiculous any kind of a playoff system, whether it’s the million dollar challenge or the Cup championship playoffs, is in racing.
It doesn’t work in NASCAR because you don’t get a second chance. An NFL quarterback can throw a couple interceptions in the first quarter and then come back and throw the winning touchdown pass in the fourth.
But on NASCAR superspeedways you can do everything right, have the best car, and still get eliminated because of somebody else’s mistake. There is no second chance.
Hopefully, somebody at NASCAR will realize that, scrap all the playoffs and make the necessary changes that will allow cars to gain separation and pass by themselves on superspeedways. Then maybe we can see real racing again.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Chicago: 1-Christopher Bell, 2-Shane van Gisbergen, 3-Chase Elliott. Last year’s winner at Chicago: Alex Bowman. Top five in last year’s race: 1-Bowman, 2-Tyler Reddick, 3-Ty Gibbs, 4-Joey Hand, 5-Michael McDowell.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport picks: None. Superspeedway races (Atlanta, Daytona, Talladega) do not count in the Old Guy Sport competition index.
Old Guy Sport competition index top 10 after 14 races: 1-Denny Hamlin 364 points, 2-Kyle Larson 301, 3-Bell 269, 4-William Byron 237, 5-Ryan Blaney 211, 6-Chase Briscoe 168, 7-Ross Chastain 102, 8-Bubba Wallace 93, 9-Elliott 92, 10-Joey Logano 91.
Old Guy Sport competition index top 10 on road courses (tracks similar to Chicago); 1-Bell 95, 2-van Gisbergen 86, 3-Elliott 50, 4-Byron 40, 5-Reddick 35, 6-Kyle Busch 28, 7-Bowman 20, 8-Gibbs 11, 9-McDowell 10, 10-Ryan Preece 4.
by Patrick Zier | Jun 27, 2025 |
Few would dispute that Denny Hamlin gets more out of his ability then any driver in NASCAR. His work ethic, his attention to detail and his drive to succeed make him the premier driver in the sport.
And that’s true even though Hamlin is closing in on 45 and at a point in his career when most drivers start tailing off. But if anything, at least right now, advancing age has pushed Hamlin to hone his competitive instincts even more, to prove to himself and others he’s still the best there is at what he does.
Heading to Atlanta this weekend, NASCAR has Hamlin third in its standings with 545 points, putting him behind William Byron (623) and Kyle Larson (569). But the NASCAR system is based on finishing races, not competing in them.
The Old Guy Sport competition index more accurately reflects how Hamlin has performed this year. Hamlin leads the competition index, which only awards points for laps led under green and top five finishes, with 364 points. Larson, with 301, is second and Christopher Bell, with 269, is third.
And, in the last five races (four actually because Hamlin skipped Mexico City to be present at the birth of his son), Hamlin has scored a whopping 146 points including a win at Michigan, a second at Pocono and a third at Nashville. And at Charlotte, he led more laps under green than anybody except Byron, who completely dominated the race although he didn’t win.
“It’s just the way I’m wired, it’s the way I’ve always been,” Hamlin said after the Michigan win according to NASCAR.com. “I don’t know if I’ve always been this way,” he continued, amplifying his remarks. “But certainly over the last 10, 15 years I’ve been this way where I’m just really addicted to the process, the process of being good.
“It’s become harder and harder every single year,” Hamlin went on. “The process changes every year, what it takes to excel.”
If Hamlin is not the most physically gifted competitor on the track, he is probably the smartest. And he is almost certainly the hardest working. He spends hours on the racing simulator to perfect his skills.
As he has gotten older, Hamlin realized that to stay on top he’s needed to find an edge, a way to utilize his experience to gain an advantage. Hamlin doesn’t just drive with his hands and feet, he uses his head as well. He is thoroughly prepared. He knows what he can do. He knows what his race car can do. And he knows what to expect on the track.
“I’m racing guys, some of ’em pretty much half my age, and they’re so good,” Hamlin said. “They’re really, really good. It’s really gratifying when I know I can run with ’em and I know I can beat ’em.
“It just feels really good to 20 years later (after he started Cup racing) still feel like this is the best I’ve ever been,” Hamlin said. “You have another birthday. You keep wondering how long are you going to be able to do this at this level.
“Listen, 57 (the number of races Hamlin has won so far) might be it. None of us know. I’m going to enjoy it (the Michigan win) as if it’s my last. Then I’ll go to work on Monday just like I always have.
“I don’t ever want to be so ho-hum with winning that it becomes boring because then I lose my drive. It feels good because I’m going to hate it when I’m not at the level I’m at now,” Hamlin commented.
“I certainly will retire very quickly after that. I’m not going to hang around and do it just to do it,” He added. “This is how I want to spend my last season; still winning, you know?”
Right now, there is no sign Hamlin is slowing down, no indication he will be getting out of his car for good anytime soon. In fact if he keeps this up, who knows? Some of the kids he’s beating now may be gone before he is.
NASCAR NOTES
No race this week. The Old Guy Sport competition index does not include races at Atlanta, Daytona and Talladega because you can’t race on those tracks. Two things determine how you finish. First, you must avoid the big wreck, which can happen at any time and anyplace and is something totally out of your control.
Second, you must be in the right lane at the right time on the last lap because you can’t pass by yourself. You can be leading the race coming out of the fourth turn and if two or three cars behind you move down and break the draft, you can go from first to 20th with no chance to win even if you have the best car.
OGS competition index top 10 going into Atlanta: 1-Denny Hamlin, 364 points; 2-Kyle Larson, 301; 3-Christopher Bell, 269; 4-William Byron, 237; 5-Ryan Blaney, 211; 6-Chase Briscoe, 168; 7-Ross Chastain, 102; 8-Bubba Wallace, 93; 9-Chase Elliott, 92; 10-Joey Logano 91.
by Patrick Zier | Jun 11, 2025 |
Ty Gibbs wanted to race. His team told him “No.”
Welcome to the new NASCAR, where technology, engineering and analytics dictate whether you race or ride. In part, that’s because of a NASCAR point system that rewards you for finishing races, not competing in them.
This means that to a certain extent, drivers no longer control their own destiny. Depending on circumstances, a race strategy is formulated in the pits which projects the best possible outcome and is passed on to the driver, who simply follows instructions.
In Gibbs’ case, this meant conserving fuel at the end of the race at Michigan so he could move up when his competition ran out. And it worked. Gibbs finished third, his best showing of the season, and another JGR driver, Denny Hamlin, won the race using the same strategy.
Gibbs, though, wasn’t happy. Just 22 and now in his third year on the cup circuit, Gibbs is considered somewhat of a prodigy and he wants to win.
“I was going to go until we ran out of fuel,” Gibbs said according to NASCAR’s website. “That was my plan. I think a win is more important than third. It’s good to have a good finish, for sure. Good to have a good day, a good comeback. We started out very horrible. Glad we could come back and get better.
“I’m definitely upset,” he continued. “We work hard to come out here and win. It’s definitely frustrating. It’s unfortunate because I feel like we had the capability to do it. I feel like we showed we were fast enough to do it,” Gibbs said.
Using the Old Guy Sport competition index as a measurement rather than NASCAR’s point system, Gibbs made tremendous improvement from 2023, his first year in Cup when he scored just 61 points, to 2024, when he had 239 including seven top fives. That was good enough for 10th in the OGS competition index final standings. But there were no wins.
In some ways, Gibbs’ approach is a throwback to another time, when drivers just mashed the gas and went all out all the time. In their minds, there were only two possible finishes, first place and no-place.
It’s different now. For one thing, aerodynamics is critical to any team’s success and because of the inability to pass in the NextGen car, getting and staying up front is key to maximizing aerodynamic efficiency.
When you’re up front, air flows smoothly over, under and around the car, making it more stable. In addition, the air coming out from under the car swirls into the trailing car, upsetting its balance.
And because the NextGen cars have low horsepower and slow throttle response, that makes it difficult to pass the lead car without using up your tires. So, once out front in clean air, the lead car can run a comfortable pace without going all out and control the race.
This has led to a new dynamic in NASCAR, where any car that can get the lead tends to stay in the lead. Of the 15 Cup races so far, one driver has led over half the race five times and in four more, one driver has led almost half.
At Martinsville, Denny Hamlin led 274 of 400 laps. At Darlington, William Byron led 243 of 293. At Bristol, Kyle Larson led 411 of 500 and at Kansas, he led 221 of 267. And Byron led 283 of 400 at Charlotte.
Then there were the guys who came close. Kyle Busch, who has really struggled the past two years at Richard Childress Racing, led 42 of 95 laps at Austin, TX, in the first race of the season. He has only led 20 laps since.
Ryan Blaney led 124 of 267 at Homestead and 139 of 300 at Nashville, and Byron led 98 of 200 at Michigan.
Given all that, NASCAR teams have had to totally re-think pit stops. Since it’s so tough to pass on the track, the best way to get to the front is to do something different when you pit.
So teams will short pit, meaning they will bring the car in before they need to hoping fresh tires will get it to the front while the rest of the field is on old tires, or take two tires or no tires in an effort to get the lead.
Because in NASCAR now, track position is everything. You can run your race while everybody behind you is scrambling.
It’s not a guarantee you’re going to win, but it’s as close to one as you can get; of the five drivers who have led more than half the laps in a race, three finished first and two were second.
As for Gibbs, he’s headed for Mexico City and the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez road course this week along with everybody else in the Cup series. And if he gets a call from the pits to conserve fuel, he’ll probably do it. That doesn’t mean he has to like it, though.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners a Mexico City: 1-Christopher Bell, 2-William Byron, 3-Tyler Reddick. Last year’s winner at Mexico City: No race. Top five in last year’s race at Mexico City: No race.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Michigan picks: 1-Byron, 2-Denny Hamlin, 3-Kyle Larson. Michigan winner: Hamlin. OGS season record: 6-6.
OGS competition index top 10 after 12 races: 1-Hamlin 314 points, 2-Larson 301, 3-Byron 237, 4-Bell 228, 5-Blaney 180, 6-Ross Chastain 102, Chase Briscoe 102, 8-Bubba Wallace 93, 9-Joey Logano 90, 10-Josh Berry 83.
OGS competition index top 10 on road courses (tracks similar to Mexico City): 1-Bell 54 points, 2-Byron 40, 3-Reddick 35, 4-Kyle Busch 28, 5-Chase Elliott 20, 6-Shane van Gisbergen 11, 7-Wallace 2, Ryan Preece 2.
