Chase Briscoe has spent the past three weeks making Kyle Larson look, at the very least, catchable. Consecutive victories at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway, alongside a near-win right before that at Kansas Speedway, have erased 58 points of Briscoe's standings deficit to the defending champ. While the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota has certainly been fast, his biggest advantage lately may not have come from anything having to do with horsepower or pace. It is the five guys standing in the No. 19 pit stall.
During one of his services on Sunday at Charlotte, Briscoe's crew changed four tires in 8.536 seconds, the fastest such stop in Racing Insights' records. It broke the record the team had established just two weeks earlier at Kansas Speedway. And it wasn't even the most consequential stop of Briscoe's Bank of America 400 victory. Just four races remain in the 2026 Chase presented by Mobil 1, with Briscoe 65 points behind Larson's No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. The No. 19 crew is doing its part to make that deficit less daunting, one fraction of a second at a time.
The numbers are staggering. At Kansas, Briscoe's crew delivered four-tire stops of 8.576 and 8.616 seconds, the two fastest on record at the time, before Charlotte went even faster. The three quickest recorded Cup stops per Racing Insights now belong to the No. 19, all from the past three races, with six of the 10 fastest four-tire stops during The Chase coming from Briscoe's team too. During the regular season, just 8% of the team's competitive four-tire stops clocked in under nine seconds. Through six Chase races, that figure has climbed to an almost absurd 41% — more than double the rate of any other team. Only 13 teams have managed even one sub-nine-second stop during that span.
Nor has the speed come at the expense of reliability. Briscoe's team has gone 15 consecutive races without a pit-crew mistake, the longest active streak among Chase contenders. Veteran rear-tire changer Lee Cunningham — part of a crew that also includes front changer AJ Rosini, jackman Caleb Dirks, carrier CJ Bailey and fueler Matt Tyrrell — noted after Briscoe's Chicagoland win in July that it always seems to take them a little while to jell. After Charlotte, Briscoe's crew now leads the season-long pit-crew rankings for the first time this year. Even after the Indiana native's close-but-no-smoked-brisket P4 at Kansas, crew chief James Small recognized its progress, joking that with this group in 2024, maybe Martin (Truex Jr.) would still be racing.
What's kind of scary is that the record-setting Charlotte stop came on Lap 167, while the race-changing one arrived later. Christopher Bell had been the car to beat, winning Stage 2 and leading 93 laps. But when a caution with about 60 laps remaining brought the leaders down pit road, Briscoe's crew delivered another blistering stop of 8.696 seconds. Briscoe emerged ahead of Bell, took the lead for the restart, and held it for the final 61 laps. Bell nearly caught him at the line after some contact between the two, losing by 0.029 seconds in the closest Cup finish of 2026. Adam Stevens, crew chief for Bell, admitted they just lost the lead on pit road.
The comparison between Briscoe and teammate Denny Hamlin is equally revealing. Hamlin entered The Chase as the No. 1 seed, 55 points ahead of Larson, but six races later he sits 49 behind. The No. 11 team's pit-road performance illustrates part of that 104-point reversal, falling from fifth in the regular season to 20th in The Chase with three recorded mistakes and a net loss of 40 positions. The No. 19 crew ranks first among Chase teams with no mistakes and 20 positions gained, marking a 60-position difference in cumulative pit-road gains and losses between two teams from the same organization. On clean four-tire stops, Briscoe holds a three-tenths advantage at 9.36 seconds to Hamlin's 9.66, and factoring in mistakes pushes Hamlin's overall average to 10.15 seconds while Briscoe stays at 9.36.
Elsewhere among the contenders, Bell's crew ranks seventh with two mistakes and 11 net positions lost, while Larson's group ranks second with no mistakes and five positions gained. Ryan Blaney's crew has climbed from 32nd in the regular season to fifth in The Chase after a personnel change. These numbers reveal an advantage Briscoe's closest competitors haven't matched as the series heads to Phoenix Raceway, a venue where late-race pit decisions and execution carry immense weight. Briscoe's own recent Phoenix history features a 30.0 average over his last four finishes, leaving his team with little margin for error, though thankfully they may not need it.
