The weekend at the Phoenix Raceway was looking rather promising for Toyota Racing Development teams, with Denny Hamlin bringing their first pole of the season. So when a Toyota won both the first and the second stage, Legacy Motor Club fans breathed a sigh of relief, knowing the future of their team was in safe hands. However, while Hamlin managed to capitalize on the Camry XSE’s pace early, Erik Jones and the #43 LMC Camry didn’t have the same fate.

They were caught off guard by the #23 Camry of Bubba Wallace, sending the LMC star into the wall and ending his day with heartbreak. While it was contact with Wallace that sent Jones off, the LMC crew chief pulled no punches against the man behind it all: Chase Briscoe.

For Erik Jones, Chase Briscoe got too close for comfort

As NASCAR headed to the first ‘short-track’ race of the season, Erik Jones was eager to repeat his season-opening success from the Daytona 500 by bringing home another top-10 at Phoenix Raceway. While Jones put in a competent lap in qualifying to score fourth on the grid, all those hopes would go up in flames after the #43 Legacy Motor Club Camry XSE entered a 4-wide battle with Chase Briscoe and a few others on a restart.

What was going to be the final restart of the day with 92 laps to go ended up being Jones’ last competitive lap as well. As the #43 entered the 4-wide battle, Briscoe’s #14 Mustang Darkhorse tightened up on the outside, shoving Wallace into Jones, who scraped the wall as Briscoe pulled away. After the incident, Erik Jones was down in 31st with over a 5-lap disadvantage, and Wallace was down in 19th. But what may have been salt in the #43 crew’s wounds was that Chase Briscoe, the man who supposedly caused Jones’ misery, was running in the top 10 around lap 268.

On X, insider Dustin Albino shared that Legacy Motor Club crew chief Dave Elenz was fuming not at Denny Hamlin’s star driver but at Tony Stewart’s promising talent instead. Elenz had exclaimed over the team radio, “F**k man. It’s f**king killed. The toe link isn’t broke, but it’s bent. I think we’ve took enough s**t from the #14 all day. We’re done with that one.” And that wasn’t all.

Jones seemed to be equally frustrated with Chase Briscoe. After the race, he shared his intentions to get on a phone call with Briscoe and confront him on their frequent run-ins. He shared with FrontStretch, “The #14 was just dragging us down over and over, restart after restart. He put us four wide because he was slowing us down so much, and I got wrecked. So, that sucks. But he seems to have an issue with me every week so, [I’ll] call him this week, he probably won’t call me back and [would] love to talk to him.” 

Feeling that Briscoe was slowing down the rest of the pack by not letting the faster cars by, Jones was fuming at the SHR driver’s proximity to the #43 on nearly every restart. While Jones felt it was personal, Chase Briscoe himself responded to Jones’ comments with a contrasting take, expressing his intentions to go ‘back to those ways.’

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Briscoe sidelined the idea of pre-meditated wrecks as he adopted an ‘aggressive’ approach

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For Chase Briscoe, Phoenix was a great outing as the #14 came home within the top 10, a place Erik Jones could have been in. With that said, Briscoe couldn’t figure out what ticked off the Legacy Motor Club crew so much. He shared his confusion with FrontStretch, “I don’t know what I did. I know we were four wide at one point. I got super tight and got into him, I think, but I don’t know if that’s the part he’s mad about or what. If he calls me, I’ll gladly answer.”

Briscoe revealed that he had never engaged with Jones closely before, stating that he had no issues with the #42 driver. The SHR driver also indicated that their run-ins had been nothing but racing, “I feel like we definitely are always kind of racing around each other. I’m racing hard. I’m trying to do what’s best for my guys. Last year, I kind of let people go, and this year, I’m not doing that.” 

This is when Briscoe revealed the new aggressive approach he was adopting to make sure he joined the front-runners. The #14 driver shared, “The guys that run up front are the guys that are the most aggressive. And I’m going back to those ways, so yeah, I don’t know what part he’s mad about. I’ll have to go back and watch it.” 

While Briscoe felt their encounter was down to him racing more aggressively, Jones believed that the #14 just wasn’t fast enough. With that said, do you think Briscoe’s newfound aggression will work against him?

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