Chase Briscoe Stretches Fuel Tank to Take NASCAR Cup Win at Pocono

After Chase Briscoe failed to remain in his pit stall until crew chief James Small told him he had enough fuel to make it to the finish on the final pit stop of Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series The Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway, the 30-year-old racer made up for his gaffe.

Briscoe was masterful over the final 40 laps of the race as he stretched the fuel in the tank of his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE, while also managing his gap back to his teammate and the all-time winningest driver at Pocono Raceway, Denny Hamlin, to take his third career NASCAR Cup Series victory, and his first since joining the Joe Gibbs Racing team in the offseason.

Race Results: The Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono

"Joe Gibbs Racing took a big chance on me. Like, I wasn't everybody's first choice, I think. Yeah, but for me to be able to get here and finally deliver a win is just an awesome feeling," Briscoe explained.

After collecting the win, Briscoe admitted that he felt the pressure to make good on his pit road miscue, and the pressure of Hamlin hounding him for 40 laps as he tried to balance going fast enough to hold the lead, but slow enough not to burn too much fuel.

"It was a lot. It was kind of weird," Briscoe stated. "I wasn't driving hard. It's not like I was on the ragged edge. It was so hard to have a guy chasing you, right, probably the guy that's the greatest of all time here. Trying to save fuel and everything else."

Adding to the improbability of Briscoe stretching the fuel in the closing laps is his penchant for overdriving his cars throughout his career. On Sunday, he was forced to back it down, and it all worked out for the Indiana native.

"Anybody that has worked with me knows I'm normally overdriving, missing my marks all the time," Briscoe quipped. "Yeah, for sure. It's crazy when you slow down. My dad tells me all the time, Slow down, you'll probably go faster. It's true there."

Small, Briscoe's crew chief, said that had it not been for a caution on Lap 125, the No. 19 Toyota would have been nine laps shy on making it to the end of the race on fuel.

"When we rolled out there, went green, we were nine laps short," Small said in his post-race press conference. "It was going to be a mountain climb. We've lost many races by things not going the right way for us. Thankfully, that caution saved us and put us in a position that we could manage our fuel till the end. You've seen this happen before. It was the same thing with Denny here in 2022 when he won, later taken away. He did the same thing. Worked out for them that day, as well. Just so thankful and proud of everybody in the team."

The caution helped, Briscoe light-footing it around the 2.5-mile triangular track filled the rest of the gap, and he claimed the win by a victory margin of 0.682 seconds.

Hamlin, who started from the pole in his first race back from a one-week absence after the birth of his third child last week, had a really good car evidenced by the driver scoring a Stage win, and the Xfinity Fastest Lap Award. However, when Hamlin got leap-frogged by several drivers on the final green flag pit cycle, he knew it was going to be a tough task to get back to the lead.

"Yeah, it's kind of the best kind of option. It was definitely going to be really difficult. It was just the key moment was when [Briscoe] and like three or four others pitted, and that caution came out, and it leaped them in front of us," Hamlin said. "At that point, we knew it was going to be really hard to pass those guys back on the racetrack. The team did a great job. You know, next best in line there of our strategy, but it just didn't work out."

Ryan Blaney rallied from the starting at the rear of the field after his team changed the starter in his No. 12 Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse following Saturday's qualifying session to finish third in Sunday's race.

Not only did Blaney have to claw his way through the full field of cars, but the driver suffered some additional adversity as his cool suit malfunctioned in Stage 1, which left him hot under the collar for the remainder of the day.

"It was hot," a noticeably spent Blaney explained. "Yeah, I flipped [the cool suit] on probably lap 15. I was like, 'Oh, it's going to be a long day,' so it was warm. Was able to just keep going. Really proud of the whole 12 guys from starting in the back, making good ground."

To make matters worse, Blaney had to fight from the rear of the field again after he was busted for speeding on pit road on Lap 58. Blaney feels had it not been for that mental error on pit road, he had a car that was more than capable of winning the race.

"Yeah. I mean, obviously, I would have liked to have won. I think after having to start in the back, then the mistake I made, I feel like we recovered really well. Our car was fast enough to do it," Blaney said. "Overall, I feel we made the most of our day. Just a little extra would have been one or two spots [better]. Overall, really proud of the effort of the whole 12-team.

Chris Buescher, who has been flirting with winning his first race of the season in recent weeks, ended the race in the fourth position, and Chase Elliott scored a fifth-place run, which gives the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion back-to-back top fives for the first time this season.

John Hunter Nemechek impressed with a sixth-place run, and he was followed by Kyle Larson, Ryan Preece, Brad Keselowski, and Austin Cindric, who rounded out the top-10 finishers.

While the talk of the town following Sunday's race was Briscoe emerging victorious, and fully securing his berth in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff field, the story for a portion of the day was brake rotors.

Riley Herbst suffered from an exploded right front brake rotor on Lap 42, which sent him hard into the Turn 1 wall. The crash ended the Rookie of the Year contender's day early, but this would just be the first of many rotor failures in the event.

Herbst's 23XI Racing teammate Bubba Wallace suffered a similar fate on Lap 55 as he burst a right front brake rotor heading into Turn 2. Wallace would pound the outside wall, and like Herbst, would have to retire the race.

The 23XI Racing teammates would be joined in the garage by Michael McDowell, the driver of the No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, who also had a right front brake rotor explode on his car on Lap 73, however, McDowell was able to limp his car back around to the garage, where he would also exit the race.

Tyler Reddick, the third 23XI Racing driver, would spend a lap in the garage area as his team would investigate their brakes, and take proactive measures to make sure Reddick didn't also have a failed brake rotor down the stretch.

The race would have one multi-car incident, which was triggered by Kyle Busch colliding with the side of Todd Gilliland's No. 34 car on the exit of Turn 2 on Lap 83. Busch would lose control of his car and spin out in front of the pack of cars near the back of the field.

Christopher Bell, and Shane van Gisbergen would also spin in an attempt to avoid colliding with Busch, as did Ty Dillon.

Another look at the incident on Lap 83. pic.twitter.com/YSBiAN039f
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) June 22, 2025

Everyone drove away from the scene with no issue, except for Dillon, who couldn't get his car refired. Dillon would end the race 20 laps down in the 33rd position.

Busch would finish the race in 20th, which dropped him a position in the NASCAR Cup Series point standings. With nine races remaining until the Playoffs begin, Busch sits 20th in the Playoff Standings and is 63 points below the cutline.

Here is how the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff cutline looks following Pocono:

12. Chase Elliott (+160 points)
13. Tyler Reddick (+107)
14. Chris Buescher (+38)
15. Bubba Wallace (+29)
16. Alex Bowman (+20)
==== Cutline ====
17. Ryan Preece (-20)
18. AJ Allmendinger (-59)
19. Erik Jones (-62)
20. Kyle Busch (-63)

William Byron saw his NASCAR Cup Series point lead shaved by 14 points after he was mired deep in the field late in the race and finished 27th. Byron started at the rear following a crash in qualifying, but sliced his way through the field early in the event.

In the end, Byron didn't get the decent finish he probably should have, and with Kyle Larson finishing seventh in the race, Byron's regular season point lead is down to 54 points with nine races left until the Playoffs.

Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway on Saturday, June 28. That race will be the first of five races televised on TNT, and the broadcast coverage of the race will kick off at 7:00 PM ET. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event.

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