LONG POND — Chase Briscoe didn’t have enough fuel to make it to the end of the race. He knew it and his crew chief James Small knew it.
So the message when he inherited the lead with 30 laps to go was to save fuel. Save, save, save.
That’s exactly what he did. He managed to conserve enough to make it to the checkered flag Sunday and win The Great American Getaway 400 Presented by VISITPA.COM at Pocono Raceway.
He did it, too, with the No. 11 Toyota of pole-sitter and seven-time Pocono winner Denny Hamlin looming large in his rearview mirror. Yet he held off his JGR teammate by 0.682 seconds.
“He is the greatest of all time here. Nobody will be able to do what he’s done here,” Briscoe said. “To be able to beat him, honestly kind of maintain my composure, I’m proud of the work I put in to be able to do that.
“It was not easy running and saving fuel while still trying to hold off Denny and stuff. It’s definitely rewarding, for sure, whenever you can beat a guy like Denny with the same equipment arguably at his best track.”
It is Briscoe’s first win of the NASCAR Cup Series season in the No. 19 Toyota and first since he joined Joe Gibbs Racing this season. It is his third career victory and punches his ticket to the playoffs over the final 10 races. He started sixth and led 72 of 160 laps.
Also, it is his first Cup win in six starts at Pocono. He won the Xfinity Series race here in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic when no fans were in attendance. This victory Sunday came in front of a third consecutive sold-out crowd that waited out a weather delay, causing the race to start more than two hours past its scheduled 2:20 p.m. green flag.
“Every week, before we take the green, I just always look up in the grandstands and savor the moment that I’m racing on Sunday in front of this many people,” Briscoe said. “This one, honestly, caught my attention, with how long the grandstands are and just a sea of people and not a single seat open. As a race car driver, as a competitor, it’s a really special feeling.”
Ryan Blaney, last year’s race winner, was third in the No. 12 Penske Ford. Chris Buescher in the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford and Chase Elliott in the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet rounded out the top five.
When Briscoe made his final pit stop on Lap 120, he left too soon and his team didn’t get the tank full of fuel.
“I knew I was going to be waiting on fuel,” Briscoe said. “Typically, the cue for me to go is when they drop the jack. James told me, ‘You’re going to go on me, we’re not going on the jack.’ The tires got done and I was sitting there waiting on fuel. I started revving the engine up so I wouldn’t stall it when I left. I think James said, ‘Wait’ but as soon as I heard anything I went. I knew right away when I came out and when Denny pitted the next lap and they were a full straightaway behind me that I probably was not in the best of shape.
“I instantly started saving fuel.”
Small said Briscoe was nine laps short when he left the pits.
“It was going to be a mountain to climb,” Small said.
The mountain got a bit smaller when Shane van Gisbergen spun in Turn 1 on Lap 125, bringing out the last of seven cautions in the race. That allowed Briscoe to save some fuel.
Six drivers who had yet to make their final pit stops did so during that caution: Brad Keselowski, Justin Haley, Kyle Busch, A.J. Allmendinger, Todd Gilliland and Cody Ware. That put Briscoe out front when the race restarted with 30 laps to go with Hamlin in second and having plenty of fuel to make it to the finish.
Each time around the 2.5-mile triangular track, Briscoe lifted his foot off the throttle and coasted through the three turns, trying to save as much gas as possible.
Hamlin seemingly lay in wait for Briscoe’s car to run out of gas. But in reality, he had a hard time catching Briscoe.
“Every time I tried to stay really close to him, it would get really tight,” Hamlin said. “That would let the 12 (third-place Ryan Blaney) come back to me. So at that point I was just trying to leave a little bit of an airgap there to allow my car to cool off and make another run at him. But at these speeds and the amount of corner speed, you just can’t overcome the aerodynamic effect. That’s been Pocono for 25, 30 years.
“I thought he was going to run out. So at that point I was just trying to save my car, but keep him honest. I just couldn’t quite get close enough to not allow him to save fuel.”
With about 15 laps to go, Small felt somewhat comfortable that Briscoe did enough to have enough fuel to make it to the end.
“Looking at the numbers, once we got into a certain rhythm there, we hit a certain fuel number per lap based on what we were saying, the way he was driving, that was probably about 15 to go,” Small said. “If we maintained that kind of pace till the end, we stood a really good chance of making it within the error of what we can calculate. Super, super close, so yeah.”
Still, Briscoe wasn’t convinced. He witnessed race leaders at Pocono in the past run out of gas in the final laps and figured he would be the next one to join that list.
Instead, he joined the list of Pocono race winners. He even had enough fuel to do a couple burnouts and drive into Victory Lane before his tank ran dry.
“We took the white flag. Waiting for it to stumble off of (Turn) one, stumble off of (Turn) two. In (Turn) three, I kind of lifted early to try to save fuel. Man, what if I don’t run hard here, if I run out and they beat me to the line,” Briscoe said. “It was just a weird mix of emotions, because I’ve never really been in that situation before.
“Yeah, I definitely am surprised that honestly we made it on fuel. I guess maybe we learned something because we’ve talked about that all year long, we’re probably taking too much fuel in a lot of these races. For us to be able to stretch it like we did, hopefully we can learn something from that.”
Starting on the pole, Hamlin led the first 32 laps to win Stage 1.
It was a pit stop toward the end of Stage 2 that helped put Briscoe up front. He pitted just before the caution came out on Lap 77 for debris on the frontstretch caused by Michael McDowell cutting a tire and dropping a brake rotor band on the track two laps earlier.
“That was the trigger for us pitting there,” Small said. “Saw the debris. It’s like now or never. We were at that point three to four laps short of our window when we pitted. We took the gamble and it paid off.”
Briscoe took the lead on the Lap-81 restart and went on to win Stage 2.
Source: Berkshire mont
Be First to Comment