Chase Briscoe had the kind of start a driver wants at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Starting from the pole, he led the opening laps and looked capable of turning his qualifying speed into a race-winning afternoon. Then a slow pit stop cost him the lead. Before he could recover, smoke ended his race. The engine failure came with almost no warning, and Briscoe initially thought the problem was somewhere else.

“I honestly thought it was a tire coming apart,” Briscoe told Frontstretch after climbing from the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.

He felt a vibration in Turns 3 and 4 while already back on the throttle. The car had been running well, so an engine problem was not his first suspicion.

“No, it was running fine. We were one of the fastest cars on the track. In the middle of Turns 3 and 4, I was already on the gas, and it just all of a sudden kind of vibrated,” he explained.

By the time he reached the straightaway, the Toyota was no longer responding normally. Smoke appeared shortly afterward, leaving him without a clear explanation.

“Then I noticed when I came off the corner and onto the straightaway, it just didn’t really run like it normally does. It went up in smoke not very long after that. So, not really any indication. Obviously, I’m not sure what happened, but they’ll figure it out.”

The failure hurt more because Chase Briscoe had been in control early. He won the pole with a 166.687-mph lap, edging Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin by 0.017 seconds.

He led the first 34 laps before the opening green-flag pit cycle changed his afternoon. A hangup on the left side stretched his stop beyond 16 seconds, dropping him out of the lead and back to fifth.

Briscoe worked his way back into the top seven, but his engine expired on Lap 78. With three laps remaining in Stage 1, the failure brought out a caution and ended the stage early. It also gave Kyle Larson enough points to clinch his third Cup championship.

There was something beyond the missed victory bothering Chase Briscoe. He had already been eliminated from championship eligibility, but entered the finale fourth in the standings. He believed he could finish as high as second and wanted to protect a top-four result.

“Yeah, for sure. Disappointing. I felt like we had a really good opportunity to potentially finish second in points or, at worst, finish top four in points, which is still a big deal. And that obviously won’t happen now with blowing up.”

Asked whether the car’s speed offered any comfort, Briscoe returned to the result he had lost.

“Yeah, I mean, we’ve been really, really fast for a long time. You hate not to get the result. I feel like we had a race-winning car, truthfully, and just to finish 36th with it or whatever is unfortunate. But I don’t know. We’re fast. Hopefully, we’ll be fast next year.”

Chase Briscoe’s estimate was off: the No. 19 officially finished 39th. Ryan Blaney went on to win the finale, while Briscoe left Homestead with an engine failure still unexplained. Joe Gibbs Racing will investigate what happened. The speed was there, but Briscoe never got to see where it could have taken him over 267 laps.