Briscoe Secures Championship 4 Berth With Thrilling Talladega Win

John K Harrelson | Lumen Digital Agency for Toyota GAZOO Racing

Wow, that's all there is to be said after Chase Briscoe came out on top of yet another incredible finish at Talladega Superspeedway as he locked his place into the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway.

“It was stressful. I don’t have much hair to begin with, but what I do have left is definitely going to be a lot more gray," Briscoe quipped. "Not going to be stressful next weekend – that’s for sure.”

After 74 lead changes, the YellaWood 500 was sent to overtime as Chris Buescher crashed from the lead with two laps remaining in regulation. In the overtime finish to Sunday's race, it looked like it was going to be a slugfest between Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron, and a contingent of Toyota racers, led, at the time, by Bubba Wallace.

Race Results: YellaWood 500 at Talladega

Larson ran out of fuel down the backstretch on the final lap, which stalled out Byron and opened the door in the low lane for Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Chase Briscoe and Ty Gibbs to sweep around Wallace, their fellow Toyota dancing mate.

In the trioval, coming to the checkered flag, the disastrous final lap for Hendrick Motorsports continued as Byron was sent spinning off the front bumper of Carson Hocevar's No. 77 Chevrolet. As Byron kicked up tire smoke at the exit of pit road, Briscoe crossed the finish line for his third victory of the season.

CHASE BRISCOE IS A @TALLADEGA WINNER! 🏁 pic.twitter.com/pwfiMdP9w1

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) October 19, 2025

After the race, Briscoe credited Gibbs, who swept out of line on the final lap to help him score the important win.

“Ty Gibbs, incredible teammate there. I mean, I honestly would not have won that race without Ty," Briscoe said. "An amazing team effort. I can't believe I won a superspeedway race. I haven't done it at any level. Thank you guys so much."

In his first season paired with Briscoe, who came over to Joe Gibbs Racing from the now-defunct Stewart-Haas Racing, crew chief James Small will compete for a championship. The veteran crew chief was elated to secure a berth in the Championship 4 at Talladega, a track where his No. 19 team has suffered a lot of bad luck over the years.

Early in the race, when Briscoe was busted for speeding on pit road, Small thought they were heading down a similar path as previous races at Talladega, but it all turned around.

"Yeah, absolutely amazing. To do it in the Round of 8, check our ticket to Phoenix, is just amazing," Small said in his post-race press conference. "We've had fast cars in the past, but usually luck has evaded us. Today, everything kind of came together. Kind of stepped on our pee-pees there at the end of stage one. Bounced back and won that stage, and just amazing."

Utilizing a last-lap surge, Todd Gilliland was able to finish in the runner-up spot, which is a career-best finish for the Front Row Motorsports driver. After climbing from his car, Gilliland's father, who had a career-best finish of second in his NASCAR Cup Series career, embraced his son after the near-miss runner-up finish.

"Yeah, it's really cool, right? You don't take those things for granted. I think right now, as we're five minutes out of the car, I'm probably more bummed than anything, but at the same time, I know it's going to sink in just how cool it is," Gilliland said after the race.

"You know, being a kid, watching my dad race here at Talladega, I always felt like this is the coolest place in the world, because this is his chance to go out and win. And you know, I still love the superspeedway racing, I think, because of that, I loved it so much as a kid. He said he's proud of me, and yeah, step in the right direction."

Gibbs would hold on to finish third, while Wallace would come home in fourth, and Cole Custer followed up a solid run at Daytona a couple of months ago, with a fifth-place result at Talladega.

Hocevar, Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell, Zane Smith, and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top-10 finishers in the race.

Of the eight NASCAR Cup Series Playoff drivers, only Briscoe and Bell notched top-10 finishes on a feast-or-famine type of day for the championship contenders.

Joey Logano, and Ryan Blaney, who were among the fastest cars for the majority of the race, ended the afternoon in 16th and 23rd, respectively.

Denny Hamlin, who was already locked into the Championship 4 heading into the day by virtue of his win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway a week ago, finished 24th after mechanical issues hampered his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota throughout the race.

Byron and Larson would finish a disappointing 25th and 26th despite battling for the win on the final lap.

Larson knew going into the overtime restart that he was close on fuel, but was reassured that he had enough fuel to make it to the finish, which gave him confidence to charge forward on the restart.

"We obviously knew it was close because we got the warning on whatever pump we were on under caution. It sounded like we would be ok once I went to the other pump, even with where it was under yellow, having to flip the switch. [Cliff Daniels] had a lot of confidence in what he told me, so it gave me confidence," Larson explained. "So, it was just hammer down, and I mean, there wasn't really anything I could do otherwise, that last run there. Then I got another warning on the final pump that we have, and was just hoping it would make it to the finish, but it started sputtering shortly after that."

After the race, Larson's crew chief Cliff Daniels admitted that running out of fuel was a narrow miscalculation.

"In a game of small margins, it was just a small margin that made the difference," Daniels said.

The tough finishes for Byron and Larson cemented what was an overall rough day for Hendrick Motorsports, as the two drivers were the highest-finishing of the four Hendrick cars in the race.

Alex Bowman suffered from mechanical issues all race and finished 29th, and fellow Playoff contender Chase Elliott was credited with a last-place finish after being swept up in a multi-car pileup on Lap 52.

Here is the crash that impacted the day in Stage 1: pic.twitter.com/vpGwmyfQBV

— Toby Christie (@Toby_Christie) October 19, 2025

Despite the early-race crash, Sunday's YellaWood 500 was a hotly contested event.

27 of the 40 drivers in the field took a turn at the front of the field, and overall, there were a total of 77 lead changes throughout the 193-lap contest.

Following Sunday's race, there will be a lot of nerves among drivers next weekend at Martinsville Speedway, as Christopher Bell holds a one-point advantage over Kyle Larson for the third spot in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff grid, which opens things up to a potential chaotic battle for the final Playoff spot, if a driver below the cutline can go on to win next weekend.

Due to how Sunday's race played out at Talladega, William Byron, Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney, and Chase Elliott all find themselves essentially in a must-win situation at the 0.526-mile short track next week.

Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, October 26. That race will be televised on NBC and can be streamed on Peacock and HBO Max, and coverage will kick off at 2:00 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will carry the live radio broadcast of the final race of the Round of 8.