It’s official: Chase Briscoe will join Joe Gibbs Racing in 2025.
The 29-year-old Indiana native will take over the vacant seat at JGR when Martin Truex Jr. retires at the end of 2024.
After a four-year stint with Stewart-Haas Racing, Briscoe will finally have an opportunity to race in the Cup Series with the best equipment money can buy. Stewart-Haas Racing hasn’t been one of the worst teams in the field during Briscoe’s tenure, but it’s a long way from being the team that won two championships in a four-year span a decade ago.
Briscoe seems to be the perfect fit to pilot Joe Gibbs’ No. 19 car, and when compared to previous moves JGR made in free agency, Briscoe lines up perfectly. Gibbs has never been afraid to go get the drivers he feels are best suited for the job, evidenced by Briscoe reportedly signing a deal with the team just one week after Stewart-Haas announced they would be closing at the end of 2024.
Whether it be Kyle Busch in 2008, Matt Kenseth in 2013 or Carl Edwards in 2015, Gibbs always seems to have a secret formula to snatching up some of the best drivers in the sport. That’s not to say they haven’t missed — J.J. Yeley and Daniel Suarez both had rough tenures with JGR in the Cup Series — but more often than not, the team is spot-on in the free agency market.
Not only does Gibbs seem to have an innate ability to bring in any driver he chooses, but it’s likely that JGR’s new driver will immediately make noise out of the gate.
In 2008, Busch won eight races in his first season driving for Gibbs. In 2013, Kenseth finished second in points to Jimmie Johnson in his debut season with JGR. In 2015, Edwards’ first year with JGR, he won both the Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500 before making the Championship Four just one season later.
Of course, it’s no surprise that this trio of future NASCAR Hall of Famers performed well at JGR, but quickly finding both chemistry and speed with a new team is no easy task. It’s a reason why fans shouldn’t panic if Briscoe struggles slightly in his first season with the team.
In the same vein, don’t be surprised if Briscoe goes and sets the world on fire, either. In the 2020 Xfinity Series season — the last time Briscoe drove cars that could be billed as championship-caliber — he won nine of the series’ 33 races.
While true that Briscoe only has one win in 3 1/2 Cup Series seasons, it should be noted that his Phoenix victory in 2022 was the catalyst for a solid sophomore season, culminating in a Cinderella run to the Round of 8. Lost in the dramatics of a fall day at Martinsville Speedway is the fact that Briscoe came within just a few laps of advancing to the Championship Race at Phoenix, where he likely would’ve been considered a favorite given his previous win at the track.
2024 has been a bounce-back year for Briscoe, whose runner-up finish in Sunday’s USA Today 301 showed he can compete with the best drivers in the Cup Series. Briscoe has quietly hovered around the playoff cut line all season, and if he were to make the 2024 playoffs, he would be considered a potential dark-horse pick to make another run.
In the grand scheme of things, however, the final 18 races of 2024 don’t mean much for Briscoe, who will have some of the best cars in the garage area at his disposal in 2025 and beyond.
Success is never guaranteed in a sport that is inherently ruthless, but Joe Gibbs Racing and Chase Briscoe appear to be a match made in NASCAR heaven — a legendary team paired with a talented young driver foaming at the mouth to win races.
–Samuel Stubbs, Field Level Media
