LONG POND, Pa. — Chase Briscoe got the cold facts when the third-generation driver’s career took an unexpected turn, leaving his lame-duck NASCAR team for the sport’s most coveted available seat with powerhouse Joe Gibbs Racing.

The message was clear at JGR — home of five Cup driver titles and a perennial contender to win another one.

“You don’t make the playoffs,” Briscoe said, “you don’t race in this car anymore.”

The Toyotas were better at JGR, sure. So were the championship standards set by Joe Gibbs and the rest of the organization.

“It’s been a lot of work,” Briscoe’s crew chief James Small said. “From where he came from, there wasn’t much accountability. Nobody was holding his feet to the fire. That’s probably been a big wake-up call for him.”

Briscoe’s eyes are wide open now, a first-time winner for JGR and, yes, he is indeed playoff bound.

Briscoe returned to victory lane Sunday at Pocono Raceway, stretching the final drops of fuel down the stretch to hold off Denny Hamlin for his third career Cup victory and first with his new race team.

“I’ve only won three races in the Cup Series, right? But this is by far the least enjoyable just because it’s expected now,” Briscoe said. “You have to go win. Where at SHR, you really felt like you surprised the world if you won.”

Briscoe raced his way into an automatic spot in NASCAR’s playoffs with the win and gave the No. 19 Toyota its first victory since 2023 when Martin Truex Jr. had the ride. Briscoe lost his job at the end of last season at Stewart-Haas Racing when the team folded and he was tabbed to replace Truex — almost a year to the day for his win at Pocono — in the four-car JGR field.

Hamlin, who holds the track record with seven wins, appeared on the brink of reeling in Briscoe over the final, thrilling laps only to have not enough in the No. 11 Toyota to snag that eighth Pocono win.

“It was just so hard to have a guy chasing you, especially the guy that’s the greatest of all time here,” Briscoe said.

Briscoe made his final pit stop on lap 119 of the 160-lap race, while Hamlin — who returned after missing last week’s race following the birth of his son — made his final stop on 120. Hamlin’s team radioed to him that they believed Briscoe would fall about a half-lap short on fuel — only for the first-year JGR driver to win by 0.682 seconds.

“The most nervous I get is when two of our cars are up front,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs now has Hamlin, Bell and Briscoe in the playoff field.

“It’s definitely more work but it’s because they’re at such a high level,” Briscoe said. “Even racing with teammates that are winning has been a big adjustment for me.”

Briscoe, who won an Xfinity Series race at Pocono in 2020, raced to his third career Cup victory and first since Darlington in 2024.

Briscoe has been on bit of a hot streak, and had his fourth top-10 finish over the last six races, including a seventh-place finish in last week’s ballyhooed race in Mexico City.

He became the 11th driver to earn a spot in the 16-driver field with nine races left until the field is set and made a winner again of crew chief James Small. Small stayed on the team through Truex’s final winless season and Briscoe’s winless start to this season.

“It’s been a tough couple of years,” Small said. “We’ve never lost belief, any of us.”

Hamlin finished second. Ryan Blaney, Chris Buescher and Chase Elliott completed the top five.

Briscoe, raised a dirt racer in Indiana, gave JGR its 18th Cup victory at Pocono.

“I literally grew up racing my sprint car video game in a Joe Gibbs Racing Home Depot uniform,” Briscoe said. “To get Coach in victory lane after them taking a chance on me, it’s so rewarding truthfully. Just a big weight off my shoulders. I’ve been telling my wife the last two weeks, I have to win. To finally come here and do it, it has been a great day.”

The race was delayed 2 hours, 10 minutes by rain and the conditions were muggy by the time the green flag dropped. Briscoe led 72 laps and won the second stage.

Briscoe wrote before the race on social media, “Anybody going from Pocono to Oklahoma City after the race Sunday?” The Pacers fan — he bet on the team to win the NBA title — wasn’t going to make it to Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

He’ll certainly settle for a ride to victory lane.

CLEAN RACE

Carson Hocevar made a clean pass of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and two feuding drivers battled without incident on restarts as they appeared to race in peace after a pair of recent wrecks on the track threatened to spill into Pocono.

Stenhouse’s threat to beat up his racing rival l after last weekend’s race in Mexico City but cooler heads prevailed back in the United States. Hocevar finished 18th and Stenhouse 30th.

OUCH

There was a minor scare on pit road when AJ Allmendinger struck a tire in the carrier’s hand with his right front side and sent it flying into the ribs of another team’s crew member in the pit ahead of him. JonPatrik Kealey, the rear tire changer on Shane van Gisbergen‘s race team, was knocked on all fours but finished work on van Gisbergen’s pit stop.

BRAKE TIME

Bubba Wallace, Michael McDowell and Riley Herbst all had their races spoiled by brake issues.

“It was a scary feeling for sure,” Herbst said. “I was just starting to get tight, just a bad adjustment on my part. Getting into [turn] one, the brakes just went to the floor. A brake rotor exploded, and I was along for the ride.”

UP NEXT

NASCAR heads to Atlanta. Christopher Bell won the first race at the track this season in March.

LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani‘s second start saw him record his first two strikeouts, but he did not advance beyond the first inning despite throwing only 18 pitches — a sign of how careful the Los Angeles Dodgers are being with his pitching progression.

“That was the original plan,” Ohtani, speaking through an interpreter, said after the Dodgers’ 13-7 win over the Washington Nationals on Sunday. “I look forward to adding more and more pitches.”

Ohtani worked around a wild pitch and a dropped popup from outfielder-turned-shortstop Mookie Betts to throw a scoreless top of the first inning, while making his second start in seven days. He struck out the game’s third batter, Luis Garcia Jr., on a sweeper that dropped toward his shoe-tops, then executed a tight, arm-side slider to strike out Nathaniel Lowe and end the inning. Ohtani’s fastball topped out at 98.8 mph after reaching triple digits in his pitching debut Monday.

Ohtani, who called his own pitches through a PitchCom device, said he was “able to relax much better” in his second outing. The biggest improvement, Ohtani added, was “the way my body moves when I pitch.”

“It’s something that I worked on with the pitching coaches, and I felt a lot better this time.”

Offensively, Ohtani went 2-for-19 with nine strikeouts in the five days between his starts. Ohtani has remained at the leadoff spot on his start days, which has meant rushing to put on his helmet, elbow pad and batting gloves in the middle of the first inning, then walking toward the batter’s box without hardly being able to take any practice swings.

In his pitching debut Monday, that was followed by a strikeout. The same occurred Sunday. But his bat came alive later in the game, after the Dodgers had finally broken through against Nationals starter Michael Soroka. With the bases loaded, no outs and his team leading by a run in the seventh, Ohtani laced a 101.3 mph bases-clearing triple to break open the game. An inning later, he added a two-run homer — his National League-leading 26th — on a ball that just barely made it over the fence in left-center.

“He’s a unicorn,” Dodgers rookie catcher Dalton Rushing said. “He does it all.”

The Dodgers have considered moving Ohtani out of the leadoff spot on his start days, particularly at home, to avoid the shorter preparation time before his first plate appearance. But they are adamant about continuing to be methodical with his pitching progression. He’ll make his third start at some point in the next six to eight days and could extend into the second inning then, but it’ll be a while until he is built up like a traditional starting pitcher again.

“It’s going to be a gradual process,” Ohtani said. “I want to see improvements with the quality of the pitches that I’m throwing and then also increasing the amount of pitches.”

NEW YORK — Shoeless Jazz crossed the plate, a century after Shoeless Joe.

Both of Jazz Chisholm Jr.‘s cleats flew off his feet as he scored from second base in the New York Yankees‘ 4-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles in an unusual morning start Sunday.

“I was so sweaty. My socks were wet. Everything had just slipped straight out,” he said.

Chisholm doubled twice, including a go-ahead, two-run drive off the right-center-field wall in the eighth inning, then slid into catcher Gary Sánchez for the final run as New York put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak. The AL East-leading Yankees won their second straight after losing seven of eight in a game that will be remembered for Chisholm’s size 10½ Jordan 1 spikes.

Shoeless Joe supposedly was given his nickname on June 6, 1908, playing semipro ball for the independent Greenville Spinners against the Anderson Electricians. New cleats had caused blisters, and he took them off and hit a long home run in the seventh inning.

Jackson won a World Series title with the Chicago White Sox in 1917, then was among eight players on the so-called “Black Sox” who were banned for life after they were accused of intentionally losing the 1919 Series to Cincinnati in exchange for money from gamblers. He finished with a .356 average in 13 major league seasons.

Asked whether he should be called Shoeless Jazz, Chisholm responded: “Wow. Is that how Shoeless Joe got his name? He ran out of his shoe?” When told Jackson earned the nickname in the 1910s, Chisholm quipped: “Oh, so he wasn’t wearing shoes.”

“I saw a lot of firsts,” Yankees captain Aaron Judge said. “11:30 game to a guy losing both his shoes. I’ve seen one cleat kind of running but not both like that. That was awesome.”

Chisholm is hitting .350 (21-for-60) with 11 RBIs since returning from a strained right oblique that caused him to miss 28 games. He raised his average to .242.

“That’s what I live for. That’s how I grew up playing baseball in high school, little league,” he said. “I don’t feel like it’s no need to change.”

New York trailed 2-0 when Chisholm hit a two-out double off Dean Kremer and headed for home on DJ LeMahieu‘s single to left.

“They say he’s the best shoe tier. I didn’t understand it until he actually did. It took me like a minute to take off my shoes just now.”

Jazz Chisholm Jr. on asking rookie Jasson Domínguez to tie his laces after putting on fresh socks and his spikes

Chisholm’s left shoe popped off between third and home. Seeing rookie catcher Maverick Handley move to his left for Colton Cowser‘s throw up the third-base line, Chisholm tried to veer to avoid contact. He caught the catcher with his right arm as Cowser was spun to the ground and the ball popped out of his mitt. Chisholm fell past the plate as the right shoe was jarred off and from his knees slapped a hand across the plate.

“He had dirt all over his face when I walked out there to get him. Looked like glitter on his face,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “We were all kind of screaming.”

After he reached the dugout, Chisholm stretched out with his stockinged feet on the bench. He put on a fresh pair of socks and then his spikes, and Chisholm asked rookie Jasson Domínguez to tie the laces.

“They say he’s the best shoe tier,” Chisholm recalled in the postgame clubhouse. “I didn’t understand it until he actually did. It took me like a minute to take off my shoes just now.”

Baltimore led 2-1 in the eighth when Ben Rice singled leading off against Bryan Baker for his third hit. Giancarlo Stanton singled to put runners at the corners, and Paul Goldschmidt pinch ran for his fellow former MVP — the first pinch-running appearance of Goldschmidt’s big league career, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Baker fell behind 3-0 in the count and left a belt-high fastball over the plate. Chisholm drove it 384 feet off the middle of the wall.

“I wasn’t going to swing if it wasn’t a fastball,” he said.

Goldschmidt, 37, slid in just ahead of Sánchez’s tag. Chisholm was a minor leaguer in Arizona’s system when Goldschmidt starred for the Diamondbacks.

“He was the guy that everybody really watched doing baserunning,” Chisholm said. “Even when I got to Miami, he was still the blueprint of how to run the bases.”

Goldschmidt took pride in his baserunning.

“It’s something that wasn’t secondary behind hitting and defense,” he said.

Chisholm took third on the throw and LeMahieu followed with a chopper to shortstop Gunnar Henderson, who threw home. Chisholm slid headfirst and was at first called out by umpire Jansen Visconti, who didn’t realize Sánchez dropped the ball as he applied the tag.

His first run, however, was the one that will live on in replays for the flying footwear.

“Go out there. Keep playing like that,” Stanton had told him. “You don’t need them.”