Chase Briscoe breaks down final pit stop mistake, credits fueler with No. 19 win at Pocono

Chase Briscoe won at Pocono, but he had to avert a near disaster to do so. A botched late pit stop nearly prevented him from getting enough fuel to finish the race.

Briscoe would wind up OK on fuel, taking the checkered flag without issue. But it could have been a completely blown golden opportunity had his fuel run out early, which was a real possibility.

So how did he screw up? Briscoe explained on the Dale Jr. Download this week.

“So whenever you’re waiting on fuel, especially at Pocono you know you’re going to be waiting on fuel, because honestly almost everywhere we go now we wait on fuel because the tires get changed so much faster than when they can put fuel in it if you’re needing to fill up the tank,” Chase Briscoe said. “But James (Small) had came over the radio, said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be going on me.’ So the tire stop itself, I felt like, was a little slow. So I was just anticipating already that I wasn’t going to be sitting there waiting as long.”

What happened next might have saved Briscoe. It was some quick thinking on his crew chief’s part, as well as his pit team.

The whole thing, though, with Briscoe leaving pit road a little too early, was a result of an earlier stop. The driver of the No. 19 car explained.

“In the pit stop before, I mean all but stalled the car,” he told Dale Earnhardt Jr. “I mean it was so close to stalling. So as they got done with the left-side tires I just started revving it up. I mean, I’m just raw checking this thing in the pit box. Almost eight grand (RPMs). And James came over the radio and he was just keyed up the whole time, and I think he went to say wait, but as soon as I heard anything, I just went. Because it was so loud, I literally couldn’t hear.”

Briscoe started to take off out of the box. A split-second adjustment helped save him.

“So as soon as I heard a voice of any kind I just assumed that meant go, but he was saying, ‘Waiting, waiting’ and then he was going to say go,” Briscoe said. “So I just went. And as soon as I went I let off the clutch, well the engine gets quieter because it’s not revved up so high. And I can hear him say, ‘Wait,’ and if you go back and watch the broadcast, you see me almost like stop. Or not stop, I’m still rolling, but I’m not spinning anymore, because I instantly tried to skid off the gas and sit there as long as I could.

“And my fuel guy, honestly, won us the race. He had a zero plug, which is essentially like as soon as the car’s stopping, he was already engaged, and he actually followed it out. And those couple tenths of a gallon we were able to get because of him was honestly the biggest reason we won the race.”

Briscoe’s team would lament shortly after the stop that they were ‘f*cked on fuel,’ telling him he might not make it to the finish. Briscoe had to save hard.

But he saved fuel expertly on the turns and was able to hold off Denny Hamlin and others to preserve the win at Pocono. Crisis averted.