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NASCAR insiders react to Chase Briscoe punching ticket to Championship 4 at Talladega

Brian Jones Profile Picby: Brian Jones10 hours agobrianjones_93
Chase Briscoe (5)
Oct 19, 2025; Talladega, Alabama, USA; NASCAR Cup Series driver Chase Briscoe (19) poses with the victory wreath with Miss Alabama Emma Terry in victory lane at the YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. Mandatory Credit: Vasha Hunt-Imagn Images

Two NASCAR insiders shared their thoughts on Chase Briscoe winning the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race at Talladega and earning a spot in the Championship 4. On The Teardown podcast, Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic discussed Briscoe earning his first trip to the NASCAR Cup Series Championship race.

“Chase Briscoe clinches his spot and punches his ticket to the final four for the first time in his career, putting two Joe Gibbs Racing drivers in with two spots remaning. ” Gluck said. “Wow. What a race.”

Bianchi was impressed to see a playoff driver like Briscoe win at Talladega. “Since this became known a little over a year ago that this was going to be a semifinals race, we’ve been counting down the days for this race, it seems like, and what this is going to be like,” Bianchi said.

“…Ultimately, it was a race that a playoff driver won. A lot of the playoff drivers going into this thing didn’t think the playoff drivers were going to win. But this ended up being the spot where Chase Briscoe punched his ticket.”

Chase Briscoe reacts to winning Talladega race

Bianchi then said that when the playoffs begin, there was a lot of talk about Joe Gibbs Racing. He said the team went through the ebbs and flows of the playoffs and now have of their drivers in the Championship 4. Last week, Denny Hamlin, a longtime member of Joe Gibbs Racing, clinched spot in the championship race after winning at Las Vegas.

After the Talladega race, Briscoe shared his reaction to clinching a spot in the Championship 4. “Yeah, the race was extremely stressful. I think I told MRN, I don’t have very much hair in the first place, but what I had left was going to be gray,” Briscoe said.

“It’s a miserable feeling trying to battle for points and just trying not to get caught up in a wreck. For us to just have the day that we had. Obviously I shot ourself in the foot there at the beginning, got the speeding penalty. It happened to work out where we didn’t lose a lot of points to other guys.”