There’s no question Chase Briscoe is one of the most talented young drivers in NASCAR Cup.

The 31-year-old driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota has qualified for the playoffs three times in the past four seasons, including a career-best showing of third place last season.

But 2026 started off as the winter of Mitchell, Indiana’s discontent. After earning a career-high three wins last season, the script flipped on Briscoe during the first four races this season, mired in one of the most challenging periods of his Cup career.

Other than his season-best second place finish at Atlanta, the second race of the season, Briscoe had a rough start with finishes lower than 35 in his other three starts: 36 in the season-opening Daytona 500, and back-to-back 37 place showings at Circuit of the Americas (broken transaxle) and Phoenix (crash), dropping him to a dismal 33 in the Cup standings at that point.

He was finally able to put some of those rough times behind him in Sunday’s Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with a strong eighth-place finish, his second-best showing of the year after Atlanta.

Briscoe could have potentially ended with an even higher finish Sunday, but caught an early speeding penalty on pit road that sent him back in the field, forcing him to dig and claw the rest of the way to get back into the top 10.

Ironically, it was the second speeding penalty Briscoe had on Sunday. He got pulled over by a Vegas-area police officer and was ticketed for having a heavy foot heading to LVMS.

“Two speeding penalties in one day,” Briscoe chuckled during a post-race interview with FOX Sports. “I got pulled over heading to the racetrack and then I got a speeding penalty here. I need to slow it down, apparently.”

Ya think, Chase?

Sunday’s finish was more like it for Briscoe

While his strong on-track finish will help pay for the off-track speeding ticket, it also will help put some of the low points this season in his rearview mirror – including those two consecutive DNFs before heading to Las Vegas.

“It was definitely a hard-fought day,” Briscoe told FOX. “I’m proud of our team for sticking with me after my early mistake (speeding penalty). Got it cleaned up on my end, especially with a car that was as fast as we had, we definitely could have been in the mix.

“Overall, had an amazing car. (We’ve) just got to do better on my end and minimize the mistakes. A couple of them, you just can’t make mistakes typically and win the race. We were just very let down for a long time (after the two DNFs). We’re going on to Darlington, where we should be good, and we’ll see what we can do.”

Indeed, Briscoe, who climbed from 33rd to 26th in the Cup standings after Sunday’s race, has good reason to be looking forward to visiting the Lady In Black: he’s won two of the last three Cup races at the egg-shaped 1.366-mile oval.

Now that Las Vegas has come and gone, while his finish was definitely a start in the right direction, he still has plenty of work to do to get back in the championship hunt.

In an interview with The Athletic, Briscoe said he easily could have lost his cool after the two straight DNFs.

“I was certainly mad and frustrated, right?” Briscoe said. “But me getting on the radio or yelling or getting out and throwing stuff, it’s not going to change or fix anything. At that point, the result already is what it is.

“I remember as a kid, my dad telling me that you never know who’s watching, even when you think you’re by yourself or whatever, you never know what sponsor might be around or a kid might be watching.”

Maintaining perspective over perception keeps Briscoe grounded, even during bad times.

“I’ve always tried to carry that throughout my career,’ Briscoe told The Athletic. “I was certainly mad and upset and frustrated, but even in the big scheme of things, there’s just way more stuff that’s important than even the result on Sunday. When I got home Monday morning, my kids were just excited to see me. They didn’t care if I won or crashed. So just keeping that perspective, especially whenever you’ve had a rough start professionally, there’s still a lot to be thankful for certainly in life.”

Having dug himself such a deep standings hole in the first four races will make it difficult for Briscoe to roar back all the way and still have a chance at winning the 26-race regular season championship before worrying about advancing in the 10-race, 16-team playoffs (if he qualifies).

“I’m still trying to win the regular season right now,” he admitted. “That’s certainly going to be a huge uphill battle. But if you go on some crazy streak, and even if you win, say somehow 10 races in the regular season, right? Like, yeah, the DNFs at the beginning of the season hurt, but with the winning now and the added bonus points, you can gain positions I feel like way quicker than what you could in the past. So I don’t think it’s out of the question.

“We obviously have to run really, really good. I think the exciting part is we’ve been running good enough to do that. It’s just we haven’t had the finishes and it’s all been stuff kind of out of our control.

“But certainly it’s hard when you feel like you’re putting in the work and you’re doing everything that you need to do to be in contention to win these races. I joked with the guys the other day, we scored 44 points at Atlanta and we have 47 points after four weeks. So, it’s just crazy like the speed that we’ve had and to only have three points in three weeks is certainly a tough tough pill to swallow.”

Briscoe earned 29 points in Sunday’s top 10 finish.

“I’m glad we were able to recover; it could have been way worse than what it was,” Briscoe said of bouncing back Sunday. “We will go on to Darlington, a place we are really good, and see if we have another good one.”