Chase Briscoe: 7 Wins, Back-to-Back Southern 500s, and the Sprint Car Kid Who Broke Jeff Gordon's Record
Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Driver Spotlight - where we pull one Cup Series driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the number 19.
The Short Version
Chase Briscoe is the driver of the No. 19 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, a third-generation racer out of Mitchell, Indiana, and one of the hardest-charging drivers in the Cup Series right now. He has 7 career Cup wins, including back-to-back Southern 500s at Darlington in 2024 and 2025, and he finished third in the standings in his first year at Gibbs. He won again at Las Vegas on October 4, 2026, and sits sixth in The Chase with five races left. If you only know one thing about him, know this: he came out of Indiana sprint cars and he still drives like it.
From a Dirt Track in Indiana to the Cup Series
Chase Briscoe was born on December 15, 1994, in Mitchell, Indiana, a town of about 4,000 people in the southern part of the state. Racing was already the family business. His grandfather Richard owned a well-known sprint car team, and his father Kevin raced sprint cars and ran in the Truck Series, winning more than 150 feature events around the Midwest along the way.
Chase got into a 410 sprint car at 13 years old. A 410 is the big one, roughly 900 horsepower strapped to a car that weighs less than a Honda Civic, and it is not the sort of thing most teenagers are handed the keys to. He won a feature that first season and became the youngest driver ever to win a 410 sprint car race, breaking a record that had belonged to Jeff Gordon.
From there it was the long climb. He won the ARCA Menards Series championship in 2016 with six wins in 20 starts, took Truck Series Rookie of the Year in 2017 with Brad Keselowski Racing, and then put together one of the great Xfinity seasons in recent memory in 2020: nine wins, 22 top-10s, and fourth in the standings. That got him the call up.
The Cup Years: Slow Build, Big Payoff
Briscoe took over the No. 14 Ford at Stewart-Haas Racing in 2021 and won Sunoco Rookie of the Year. The first win came on March 13, 2022, at Phoenix, and it put him in the record book in an unusual way: he became the 200th different winner in NASCAR Cup Series history.
Then things got lean. The 2023 season was a 30th-place grind. Stewart-Haas was winding down, and by 2024 the organization had announced it was closing after the season. Briscoe answered by winning the Southern 500 at Darlington on September 1, 2024, beating Kyle Busch in the regular-season finale and punching his ticket into the postseason in the team's final year. It is one of the better last-call stories the sport has had.
Joe Gibbs Racing hired him to replace Martin Truex Jr. in the No. 19, and 2025 was the breakout. Three wins, 15 top-5s, 19 top-10s, seven poles, and a third-place finish in the final standings. He won the Southern 500 again, making him the back-to-back Darlington crown jewel winner, and he added Pocono and Talladega.
Signature Moments
Three races tell you most of what you need to know about him.
Darlington, 2024. A 73-race winless streak, a team about to shut its doors, and the regular-season finale on the line. He won it anyway.
Chicagoland, July 5, 2026. NASCAR came back to Chicagoland Speedway, and Briscoe led 51 laps and held off his own teammate Christopher Bell by two tenths of a second to end a winless stretch that went back to Talladega in October 2025. Earlier that season he had been as low as 37th in points.
Las Vegas, October 4, 2026. The most complete race of his career. He led 175 of 267 laps, swept the stages, and won by more than a second after Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick wrecked each other behind him trying to chase him down on the last lap. It came one week after he gave away a win at Kansas, which he admitted had put him in a rough place mentally. He called it redemption, and the win cut his deficit in The Chase from 123 points to 84.
By the Numbers
Here is the career so far. Every figure below is a NASCAR Cup Series total through the October 4, 2026 race at Las Vegas.
Off the Track
Briscoe and his wife Marissa live in North Carolina with three kids. Their son Brooks arrived in October 2021 after the couple went through a miscarriage the year before, something they have talked about publicly, and twins followed in October 2024. He left Indiana for Charlotte in 2014 with no ride lined up and chased the sport on faith.
He is also a race team owner now. In August 2026, ahead of Knoxville Nationals week, Chase Briscoe Racing acquired Brent Marks Racing along with its High Limit Racing membership, turning Briscoe into the owner of a full-time national sprint car operation. Marks stays in the seat of the familiar No. 19 sprint car and took on general manager duties. For a guy whose grandfather owned a sprint car team, that is about as full-circle as it gets.
One more thing fans tend to like about him: he is accessible. He turns up in the NASCAR community on Reddit and talks to fans directly, which is not something most Cup drivers do. He also met his future Gibbs teammate Christopher Bell through iRacing, years before either of them made it.
The Bottom Line
Chase Briscoe is the proof that the old path still works. No development money, no famous last name outside of Indiana, just a kid who was fast in a sprint car and kept being fast until somebody had to notice. He has two crown jewels, seven Cup wins, and at 31 he is driving the best equipment of his life. The championship is the only box left.
Ride with the number 19. A few Briscoe pieces in stock right now:
- Chase Briscoe #19 2026 Chicagoland Winner Tee
- Chase Briscoe #19 2025 Talladega Winner Tee
- Chase Briscoe #19 2026 Bass Pro Shops Car Scheme Tee
- Chase Briscoe #19 2026 Bass Pro Shops Barbed Wire Hoodie
- Chase Briscoe #14 2024 Southern 500 Winner Tee
- Chase Briscoe #19 2026 Cup Series Schedule Tee
See it all in the Chase Briscoe collection. New driver spotlights drop every Thursday.
