“To finally deliver a win is just an awesome feeling,” Chase Briscoe said after his long-awaited breakthrough at Pocono. And honestly? You can’t blame him for soaking it in. Briscoe has been one of the most quietly consistent drivers of the 2025 NASCAR season. The JGR man has six top-five finishes, eight top-10s, and a near-miss with a P3 at Charlotte. He’s been knocking on the door for months. But each week, something kept that door shut.

Blame it on bad timing, strategy shakeups, or just plain rotten luck. That’s what made this Pocono win feel so different. Not just because he finally got the job done, but because of how it happened. Nobody, not even his crew chief, expected it to play out this way. And that’s where the real story begins.

Chase Briscoe wins fuel-fighting duel at Pocono

Today, Chase Briscoe didn’t just snag his first win of 2025 at Pocono. Instead, he orchestrated one of the most unpredictable fuel-saving performances of the season. After a slip-up on his Lap 120 green-flag pit stop, Briscoe was suddenly racing not just Denny Hamlin but against quickly emptying fuel tanks, too. However, none of this seemed to faze the #19.

Crew chief James Small admitted, “We are f—– on fuel here.” Chase Briscoe had left the pit box before the car had taken on a full tank of fuel. The rest of the race and the result looked bleak for Chase Briscoe. Will he have enough fuel to last the race? Well, apparently not. Small noted that if the race had gone green after the last pit stop, Briscoe would have been nine laps short.

However, it was the Lap 125 caution, for Shane van Gisbergen’s spin, that changed the game. As Small noted in the post-race press conference, “Thankfully, that caution you know saved us and then put us in a position that we could manage our fuel to the end.” Suddenly, the strategy shifted from racing to survival. Briscoe light-footed his final laps, keeping Denny Hamlin in his rear-view while coaxing every drop of fuel out of his tank.

In fact, the finishing margin, just 0.682 seconds, mirrors that dynamic tension. “I was shocked that we made it, to be honest,” Small expressed after Briscoe’s win. Hamlin, the seven-time Pocono king, kept hunting him unleashed after the final restart. Briscoe, on the other hand, treaded the fine line between aggression and conservation. As Small summed up: “One of Chase’s great habits is to you know drive it in till he sees, you know, Jesus,” a testament to Briscoe’s overdriving tendencies turned into disciplined execution when it mattered most.

And Small was candid about this aspect of Briscoe’s driving, which everyone was aware of. The JGR #19 would overdrive his car and get into bad positions, but today, he used that to his advantage. Small added, “That’s one of the things we’ve been working on. Just trying to get off the corner and not overdriving entries and things like that.”

This win wasn’t just about speed. Rather, it was born of split-second strategy and nerve. Briscoe delivered on Joe Gibbs Racing’s gamble to sign him after a mixed bag season at a declining Stewart-Haas Racing in 2024 and punched his ticket to the playoffs. But more importantly, he proved he can thrive under uncertainty, fuel or otherwise. As Small summed it up perfectly, “He learned something today, as well you know.” 

Well, Briscoe certainly did. First, do not leave the pit box until you have adequate fuel, and second, sometimes a little luck and a lot of discipline can make up for a misstep. On a day when it looked like the tank and the dream might run dry, Chase Briscoe crossed the finish line full of lessons and finally, a win. And for Briscoe, this win meant so much more than one could imagine.

Entering this race, two of Briscoe’s teammates had already boasted three wins this season. Christopher Bell, Briscoe’s childhood buddy, raced to three wins early on, while Hamlin reached that mark at Michigan earlier this month. The #19 knew the pressure was on him to deliver. Briscoe said after his win, “Last couple weeks especially, there’s just been this huge weight on my shoulders… I feel like I honestly weigh like a 100 pounds less already… The expectation is if you’re not gonna be in the playoffs, you’re not gonna be in this car anymore.”

Replacing championship-winning Martin Truex Jr. in the #19 was never going to be easy, but now, Briscoe has silenced all his doubters. Let’s hope he can carry this momentum next week to a track where he hasn’t been that good at, historically.

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Chase Briscoe will look to ride this momentum to Atlanta

With his Pocono triumph punched and a playoff spot secured, Chase Briscoe is eager to carry that energy into Atlanta. Victory often breeds confidence, and Briscoe knows how crucial it is to maintain momentum heading into the Quaker State 400 this Saturday at EchoPark Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway).

Briscoe’s track record at Atlanta is a mix of promise and challenge. In nine career Cup starts at the venue, he has an average finish of 22.78. Briscoe’s best finish? 15th in 2021 and 2022. Earlier this year, Briscoe finished 21st in the Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta, a race that saw teammate Christopher Bell take the checkered flag for Joe Gibbs Racing. Despite his modest results at the track, Briscoe’s improved form and confidence after his Pocono win could signal a breakthrough weekend. With his No. 19 JGR Toyota running strong of late, Briscoe will be looking to turn his Atlanta fortunes around and continue his push toward a deep playoff run.

The Quaker State 400 at Atlanta is scheduled for Saturday, June 28, 2025, under the lights at 7:00 p.m. ET, with coverage on TNT and PRN/SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. There will be no practice session at Atlanta this weekend, with teams jumping straight into qualifying on Friday evening before the main event. The race is also part of NASCAR’s in-season tournament, adding extra stakes as 32 drivers compete for a $1 million prize. Fans can expect a thrilling, high-speed spectacle on Atlanta’s newly configured, high-banked track, which has become a fan favorite for its pack racing and unpredictability.