Denny Hamlin addresses Chase Briscoe prospects in Cup Series playoffs

Chase Briscoe pulled off the miracle win at Darlington, but can he go on a run in the Cup Series playoffs moving forward? That’s the question NASCAR fans and Denny Hamlin are asking following the victory.

On the latest episode of Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin, the No. 11 wheelman tried to make sense of Briscoe’s championship prospects, and if the full power of Stewart-Haas Racing will now be behind the No. 14 over the next couple of months.

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“Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what — you know, I don’t know exactly how it’s run, so I can’t tell you, you know, what they could change to do that. But certainly, yes, their focus will be to, you know, get the No. 14 up there as high as they can, make the deepest championship run that they can,” Denny Hamlin said, regarding SHR putting all their eggs in the Briscoe basket. “But yeah, it’s interesting. The No. 14 car, you know, we went to some racetracks, and they were really, really bad. When I say bad, like, really, really bad.

“Some of the Stewart Haas cars, I’ve seen where they’ve been way off the pace. Like, one or two of their cars will be way off the pace for a little while during a race, and then, you know, they come back and they finish okay. But I think the tracks lend themselves okay to Chase. I think, you know, he’s pretty good on road courses. We’ve got a couple of those in the playoffs. If he can get to the Round of Eight, there’s one there — it’s in the Round of 12. So, I mean, he’s going to have an opportunity. He’s good on short tracks. You never know. This could be a team that could, you know, realistically finish in the top eight in points.

“I mean, making the Final Four probably would be a stretch. But you know, anything can happen. You know, who’s to say, you know, how this thing’s going to turn out.”

Even if Hamlin isn’t exactly convinced Briscoe is a championship contender, he realizes that the No. 14 wheelman’s win at Darlington was impressive. It’s not a track where you can simply luck into a victory.

“Tracks like Darlington, you’re not going to luck up and win a track like Darlington,” Hamlin stated. “It just takes too much from the car, driver, pit crew and all that. The No. 14 team has all those pieces of the puzzle together, right? They have decent enough funding to where their cars are fast enough, their pit crew is good enough, their drivers good enough, and he stayed up front the entire race, right?

“So, it’s just Daytona or the superspeedways, Atlanta this weekend, I mean, definitely could see another surprise winner this weekend. It’s just a different type of racing that, you know, as a sport, we’ve just morphed in this direction.” 

Alas, it remains to be seen how Chase Briscoe fares in the playoffs, but with the schedule shaking out the way it does, the No. 14 might not be done in Victory Lane in 2024.