Chase Briscoe managed a third-place finish in Nashville, but the result was far from satisfactory as he watched his teammate Denny Hamlin snatch the win in a dramatic finish. And the disappointment was evident on Briscoe's face after the race.

“I've never been so frustrated and disappointed in my career, actually,” Briscoe admitted. “I felt like I had half a second on the field.”

The frustration had fair grounds because he directly felt he had a legitimate shot at victory. “I thought our car was pretty unbelievable,” Briscoe said. “The best it’s been at points in the race.”

Briscoe consistently finished in the top-10 in the first two stages. Then the battle in the final stage happened.

“I thought that every opportunity was going to be perfect for me,” Briscoe added. “They just kind of give each other some momentum and wash them up the racetrack. And it would just kind of leave the bottom open for me through the corner.”

As the white flag waved, it seemed that Briscoe was in the perfect contention spot for victory. “I was trying to get three wide to the bottom, and then Denny kind of blocked it,” he explained. Watch the moment here:

When Briscoe couldn't enter from the bottom, he came up from the top.

“Honestly, I was surprised that I was able to get three wide top.”

However, destiny had other plans as he snatched defeat right from the jaws of victory, making the third-place finish seem like mere consolation. Such a result is also reminiscent of his 2026 season, which has been quite outré for the driver.

Chase Briscoe’s results don’t match his speed

Chase Briscoe’s 2026 season is becoming quite a strange and peculiar campaign for the driver. Despite racing for JGR, he remains winless and sits outside the top 10 in points despite showing excellent race-winning pace.

He already has five top-five finishes and has led 117 laps this year, yet bad luck, either through mechanical failures or crashes, has consistently ruined strong results for him.

To add to this, penalties on the pit-road like the one in Vegas and then the aero issues in the Next Gen car have created more problems.

He opened the season with three finishes of 36th or worse despite qualifying near the front in the first four races. The contrast has become impossible to ignore.

This gap between pace and results is now becoming too significant to overlook. Very few drivers have shown this much speed with so little reward, showcasing that Briscoe remains one of the most underrated stories of the year.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Uday Jakhar

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason