Sometimes, some things don’t age well, and one Joe Gibbs Racing driver found himself on the receiving end. Ahead of the Pennzoil 400 weekend in Las Vegas, the Coach’s esteemed driver revealed on his Instagram story that he had been pulled over by police for speeding earlier in the day. It seemed like a harmless comment before the race soon took an ironic twist once the action began at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Before the race, Chase Briscoe found himself in a bit of a pickle with the police, writing, “Hopefully my only time getting a speeding penalty today 😂.”

But unfortunately for the No.19 driver, that did not age well. Trouble for his team started early during the first round of green flag pit stops. Around lap 36, Briscoe was flagged for speeding on pit road, forcing him to serve a costly penalty that dropped him back in the running order while the race continued with drivers like Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, and Kyle Larson battling near the front.

Despite working to regain track position through the middle stages of the race, Briscoe’s day went from bad to worse later in the event. During another trip down pit road, the No.19 Toyota was again caught speeding, handing him a second pit road penalty. Repeated infraction proved extremely costly, eventually leaving Briscoe one lap down to the leaders as the race moved towards its closing stages.

With roughly 35 laps remaining, the leaders were locked in a tight fight at the front, with Hamlin leading Bell, with drivers like Chase Elliott, William Byron, and Chris Buescher running inside the top group.

Briscoe, meanwhile, was left trying to recover from the earlier mistakes, adding to the string of his unfortunate start to the season. In a cruel twist of fate, the driver who joked about avoiding speeding penalties before the race ended up suffering two of them on pit road, effectively derailing what could have been a competitive afternoon in Las Vegas.

But Briscoe has salvaged his race quite well. With about 40 laps to go, he entered the top 10 for the first time in the race. The momentum didn’t stop there; the 31-year-old eventually made it up to P8 at the finish line, completely defying all odds. However, Briscoe will need a lot more to make it to the playoffs this year.

Briscoe lays down exactly what he needs to crack the Chase

Briscoe came into the 2026 season hoping to build on the momentum he and JGR created toward the end of last year. He had finished the previous campaign strongly, ending the season third in the standings and looking poised to carry that form into the new year. Instead, the opening weeks of the season have been far more turbulent than expected.

The trouble began at the season opener Daytona 500, when Briscoe’s Day unraveled and resulted in a 36th-place finish. That result immediately put him on the back foot in the championship standings, dropping him to 37th after the first race of the year.

He briefly turned things around the following week at Atlanta Motor Speedway. A strong run there produced a runner-up, allowing him to surge back up to 16th standings before the schedule shifted to the road course at COTA. The rebound didn’t last long. A difficult outing at the venue ended with another 37th-place result, and a similarly rough race at Phoenix Raceway the following weekend pushed him down to 33rd in the championship order.

Speaking on SiriusXM NASCAR radio, Briscoe acknowledged that the stretch has been frustrating, though he emphasized that the speed of the No. 19 team is what would keep him afloat.

“It’s certainly frustrating… We’ve scored 40, I think 44 points at Atlanta. We have 47 points on the year. It’s just, it’s been a rough go. But I think the encouraging thing is we have been fast…We’ve literally been in the mix to win every single time when this has happened. Once we can put some of this behind us and get a little bit of luck on our side, I think that we’re going to be certainly right there in the mix,” Briscoe said.

This year has been tougher to navigate. Even so, the 31-year-old believes the solution is straightforward: keep executing and avoid the setbacks that have derailed their races so far.