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.