Last year, Chase Briscoe cracked the top four, the height of his NASCAR Cup career thus far. He elevated his on-track presence upon switching to Joe Gibbs Racing. Although he improved on road courses as well, his performance on the twisty stuff still fell short of his performance on ovals. Of 30 starts on road courses, Briscoe has finished just two inside the top five and nine within the top ten, carrying an average finish of 18.4.
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Still, the No. 19 driver somehow relishes heading to such facilities. During a recent trip to Austin to promote the First Responders Appreciation Weekend at COTA, Briscoe opened up about the topic.
“I surprisingly love road courses. It’s something that even at the beginning of my career, I loved going to them. I was just four or five seconds off the pace, and I had no clue where to get faster. And then I went and did a lot of road course racing and just kind of started to understand what I needed to be doing different. And I love road course racing now. It’s one of my favorite things to do,” he stated.
While the Indiana native joked about feeling slightly less excited now that Shane van Gisbergen competes in the field because it proves a little harder to win, Briscoe does enjoy visiting road courses simply because, as a driver, he feels he can make a bit more of a difference.
Briscoe also confessed to enjoying the COTA racetrack overall, even though his average finish on the circuit stands at 15.6 across five starts. He has finished just one race inside the top ten there. Yet he loves the track in Austin, which also hosts F1 in America.
Briscoe’s sole complaint about COTA centers on how the track’s S-curves after the first hairpin are difficult to officiate in the series, and there exists considerable gray area, which presents one frustrating aspect: corner cutting.
Briscoe’s road course improvement in 2025 after moving to JGR.
Moving from SHR to JGR provided him with better machinery, which strengthened his performance across all track types, including road courses. Stewart-Haas Racing’s declining competitiveness in its final seasons hampered Briscoe’s development, masking his potential due to inadequate equipment and diminished technical support.
Last year, he showed improved, consistent speed on the tracks, with top-ten finishes in three of the six road-course races. His strongest performance among the road course contests came at Sonoma Raceway, where, after starting the race from second position, he finished in the same spot.
In Mexico City, Briscoe rolled off from 19th but accelerated to reach seventh by the time the checkered flag waved. Before 2025, Briscoe characterized his Cup road course performance as “hit-or-miss,” noting he would either run very well or be “just off.” Heading into 2026, that might be the case anymore.
