CONCORD, N.C. — At Charlotte Motor Speedway’s checkered flag, a duo of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates were fighting for the win in Chase Briscoe and Christopher Bell, while Denny Hamlin escaped with another top five.
Behind them, Kyle Larson walked away without a top-five finish for the first time this year in The Chase presented by Mobil 1. The No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet took the checkered flag a postseason-worst sixth … which serves as a reminder of how blindingly fast the defending champions have been through The Chase so far.
RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Charlotte
JGR is trying to claw away at Larson’s points lead, particularly on the heels of Briscoe’s second consecutive victory: Larson extended his lead over Hamlin to 49 points, while Bell and Briscoe now trail by 51 and 65 points respectively. In theory, that’s a healthy margin ahead of the competition considering second place pays just 35 points. But with four races remaining, Larson knows better than to feel safe out front.
“I won’t feel comfortable until it’s over,” Larson said. “I mean, obviously, like Briscoe winning and having a good day, like you can take big chunks out if you win. We’re gonna go to some tracks where others are really good at here coming up, and just got to keep putting in days like we did today when we weren’t the fastest but still get good points.”
Larson has been the class of the field throughout the opening 60% of The Chase, claiming two wins and posting an absurd 2.8 average finish. The team rallied from a sluggish start at Las Vegas and was strong early in Sunday’s Bank of America 400 at Charlotte, leading a race-high 97 laps. But Larson wasn’t able to overcome Toyota’s strength once his Chevrolet was caught in traffic.
Cliff Daniels, crew chief of Larson’s No. 5 team, saw Sunday’s result as a helpful look inside the true battle for this year’s NASCAR Cup Series championship.
“I mean the Toyotas were really fast, and honestly, a good reality check for us,” Daniels told NASCAR.com. “I think that they’re pushing hard and we have to continue to push ourselves really hard. Up front earlier, our car was OK. I think Stage 2, we weren’t bad. Stage 3, when we got back in traffic, we just weren’t quite as strong, and we’ll certainly pick through what we could have done better to try to keep up with the track, with the car. Kyle, talking to me after the race, said, ‘Man, I just didn’t feel that bad. Just need a little bit of this or that.’ So again, good reality check for how fast those guys are, and yeah, we’ve just got to keep pushing hard for the next four.”
Joe Gibbs, team owner and namesake of Joe Gibbs Racing, sees good prospects ahead for his top three teams. And all he needs is an opportunity.
“I’m just really thrilled where we are as an organization, and I think we do have three that are sitting there probably 50 to (65) points behind,” Gibbs said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, but hey, with four races to go, all you can ask for in pro sports is to have a chance, and I think we have a chance.”
For a moment at Kansas Speedway on Sept. 27, Briscoe seemed destined for victory after passing Larson for the race lead late in the going — a win that would have marked the first of three consecutive victories for the No. 19 Toyota. Instead, Briscoe’s handling built too loose late and Larson surged back by him for the race win. No. 19 crew chief James Small was furious that afternoon. Now, in consecutive weeks, Briscoe has held off fierce charges late — at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, against Larson; at Charlotte, against Bell — and cut his deficit to Larson’s points lead from 123 points (eighth) to 65 (fourth) in just two weeks.
“I think we’ve got to step on their throats while we can,” Small said. “You’ve got to keep winning. It’s still a big gap, and if they just consistently score points and answer, even if we go and win the next three, it’s still very hard to close that gap. So yeah, I’m not going to let off the throttle pedal right now.”
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Briscoe is admittedly not a guy who carries a step-on-their-throats kind of demeanor. Actually, “definitely not,” Small said, but that’s a balance Briscoe is still managing.
“I mean, you can step on their throat. You can be a nice guy though outside of the race car,” Briscoe said. “But in the race car, I think you’ve got to be a killer. And yeah, I think for us, that’s the whole approach is just going, and I mean just trying to dominate races. Like I was saying earlier, that’s the only way you’re going to cut into the gap is by winning races. If you just run second or third and Larson runs second or third with you, you’re not going to gain 65 points in four weeks. So yeah, just have to go win races and just have to be ultra aggressive, truthfully. …
“Compared to Kansas, [the championship] feels a little more realistic. But I mean, the gap honestly still feels huge and just feels like a missed opportunity. Like I said, there’s four laps I can count on my hand where I’ve gave up 75 points. So, from that standpoint, it feels like a little bit of a missed opportunity. Just the gap still feels huge, but yeah, you’re at least still in the mix.”
Somewhere in this equation lies Denny Hamlin, the No. 1 seed entering The Chase, who has been OK but not quite to his winning standard throughout NASCAR’s postseason. His fifth-place finish Sunday at Charlotte was his second-best result behind a third-place run at Kansas two weeks ago. After starting the 10-race run to a championship with a 55-point advantage over Larson, Hamlin now trails him by 49 points and hasn’t won since June 14 at Pocono Raceway.
“It just seems like we’re pretty good, just not really top two right now,” Hamlin said. “So we’ve just got to improve performance and figure out where we’ve got to improve. I felt good about where I was all day and just until the very end right there.”
For a moment, Hamlin seemed to have his mojo back. Ripping through the field after a Lap 36 pit penalty, Hamlin keyed his radio at Lap 92 after passing Daniel Suárez for seventh place: “You let these [expletives] know I’m on my way!” That attitude continued as he moved Larson out of the way inside the top five on a Lap 123 restart. But that surge of bravado eventually faded.
“Well, our run stopped there unfortunately, so I shouldn’t have opened my mouth on that one,” Hamlin said. “But I just felt like we had a race-winning car for the first 100 (laps) and then after that, just got stuck in that third (or) fourth range and just couldn’t do anything with it, especially when the track cooled off. I was trying to make up a lot of the time that we had lost in that first stage by going to the back.”
Bell was just 0.029 seconds shy of taking the win away from Briscoe, a swing in points that would have put Bell just 31 points behind Larson and Briscoe 85 out. Sitting third in points, the No. 20 driver wasn’t interested in any silver linings Sunday night.
RELATED: Bell ‘in shock’ after Charlotte loss
But as it stands, three JGR Toyotas are now hot on Larson’s heels heading to a track where he knows he needs to improve: “I mean, Phoenix is difficult for us here lately.”
For Cliff Daniels, the focus remains solely on his No. 5 team, regardless of JGR’s progress or any other competitor’s.
“I feel like it’s us against us, and it’s always been that way,” Daniels said. “You have to stay focused on your game and the things that you have to do to improve yourself. We know how good those guys are. I mean, the whole world knows how good those guys are. So to spend time thinking about how good they are would just be a waste of brain cells, really. We’ve just got to go focus on the things that we’ve got to do to be strong from here on out.”