When rumors of Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) shutting down its operations began strengthening around the initial weeks of May, the team’s drivers including Chase Briscoe were left nervous about their futures. Furthermore, they weren’t allowed to get in touch with other teams unless and until SHR confirmed the news. But it did not take long for Briscoe to find a seat once it did greenlight the rumor.
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Briscoe had already revealed in an interview that he had begun contacting other teams right from the conference room in which Tony Stewart told him about the fate of the team on Tuesday, May 28. One of the people whom he’d texted was Dave Alpern, the president of Joe Gibbs Racing. On Wednesday night, the display on Briscoe’s phone lit up with a call from Alpern.
The president asked to have breakfast together on Thursday and five days later, on the next Wednesday, June 5, Chase Briscoe was a driver for Joe Gibbs Racing. The quick transition left the driver unable to truly grasp the magnitude of things. “It was a super quick thing. It’s like four or five days. It did happen crazy fast,” he said during the announcement of his signing on June 25.
The timeline for @ChaseBriscoe_14 from @StewartHaasRcng closing announcement to getting hired @JoeGibbsRacing pic.twitter.com/Y4DM7MtCDW
— Claire B Lang (@ClaireBLang) June 25, 2024
But this was not all the onboarding experience was. Following his initial breakfast with Alpern, Briscoe had not heard from the team for a couple of days. On Saturday, Joe Gibbs gave him a call and followed that up with in-person meetings on Sunday and Monday. The exchange of words and thoughts in these sessions had been enough for Gibbs to verify the man Alpern had been confident about.
What went down after Chase Briscoe signed the contract?
Roughly three hours after Briscoe put his pen to the paper, Coach Gibbs rang him up again wanting to know what his plans for the following morning were. A flight to Missouri at 6:00 a.m. was suddenly on the driver’s calendar. On the other end of his journey was Johnny Morris, the founder and CEO of Bass Pro Shops. Once the meet and greet ended, another flight took the driver back home to North Carolina.
He arrived just in time to make the plane that flew out to Sonoma for that weekend’s Cup Series race. Briscoe said, “They snuck me around the back so nobody saw me getting on Joe’s plane and getting off Joe’s plane. Yeah, like this whole process has happened unbelievably fast for sure.” He will certainly take well to not having to sneak around airports anymore.
