Briscoe still 'doing what comes naturally' but has found a new level

It was early in the second stage of the NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when Leigh Diffey in the NBC Sports booth made an observation about Chase Briscoe.

"He is amped up today," Diffey said.

The broadcast had been following the battles of Briscoe, William Byron, and Denny Hamlin. Briscoe was at the center of it all by trading positions with both drivers, but going back and forth mostly with Byron. Diffey's comment came after Steve Letarte noted that the top four drivers in the race at the time – Kyle Larson, who was leading Briscoe, Byron, and Hamlin – were all ranked at the top of the leaderboard in laps led this season.

"The intensity of the racing is higher," Letarte said.

A few minutes later, Jeff Burton added another observation. It came as Briscoe and Byron continued to fight for position.

"Those two are going at it," Burton said. "It is aggressive."

Briscoe ultimately finished fourth to Hamlin, fading in a two-tire versus four-tire outcome. The performance, in which Briscoe qualified second and led 57 laps, swung him above the playoff grid cutline as the Round of 8 put one race in the books. It was his sixth top-10 finish in seven postseason races.

A week later, RACER asked Briscoe, based on those comments, whether he was racing any differently this year.

"I don't feel like it," he said. "I feel like I've done the same thing I've done the last five, six years of my career. It's just the car goes faster, and so it makes it where I look like I'm doing stuff differently, but I don't necessarily feel like I'm doing anything different. My prep work looks different from the standpoint of what JGR sends me – it's a little more in-depth.

"But as far as driving the car, no. I'm doing what comes naturally, and I go faster."

Briscoe clinched his first superspeedway win, and with it, a maiden trip to the Championship 4 with his victory at Talladega. Chris Graythen/Getty Images

The next day, Briscoe was the fastest driver to the checkered flag on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, clinching a spot in the Championship 4 for the very first time. In doing so, he won on a superspeedway for the first time in his career, and added to a season in which he's led the point standings for the first time, has won multiple races in a year for the first time, and continues to add to the most laps led, top-10, and top-five finishes he's had in a single season.

The move that Briscoe made to win the race came when he saw a moment and had the confidence to seize it. It unfolded quickly and not how Briscoe imagined it, as he was committed to pushing Bubba Wallace to the victory going into the overtime attempt. A win by Wallace would keep another playoff driver out of victory lane. But the push Briscoe gave Wallace was so good that it cleared them of the field down the backstretch. Wallace didn't cover left, which surprised Briscoe, and he made the move to the inside.

"Truthfully, when I made the move, too, I didn't know if I was necessarily going to win the race, but I felt like, at least if I was leading the lane on the bottom, I was probably going to at least run top five," Briscoe said. "It was going to be okay if Bubba won. I cleared Bubba, and Ty [Gibbs] kept shoving me. I couldn't believe I won a superspeedway race. [Richard] Boswell stopped me there on pit road, and I'm speechless (that) I won a superspeedway race. It's such a big thing (at Stewart-Haas Racing), how bad I was at them.

"It's so cool to finally win a superspeedway race. It was kind of the last style of track in my career I've not been able to win on. That was a huge checklist there, as well."

James Small knows his driver has come a long way behind the wheel of a Gibbs Toyota. But even as they get ready to race for a championship, there is still more to go.

"It's still a weekly process," Small said. "I disagree with him that he's driving the same. There are things we work on every week just to try and get him out of bad habits and help him be better. Just many things I don't think people have focused on before, on how to make speed.

"He listens to everything. He's done an exceptional job of taking it all on board and getting better. A lot of it is also him getting accustomed to our cars, getting more of a feel, especially on the bigger tracks. That took some time. I think he feels at home now in the cockpit. He knows what we're after, what we need him to drive like, all of that. Yeah, it's finally started to mesh. We're still not at our full potential, I don't think."

So even though life and racing look different for Briscoe, he swears he's the same driver he's been since he arrived in the Cup Series five years ago.

"I think it just looks different," he said. "I think when the car's potential is there … if my car is closer in speed to the other guys, it allows me to fight them for a longer amount of time than I would have been able to in the past. Yeah, I don't feel like I've done anything different.

"I think now, if anything, I don't have to try as hard. So, things are a little easier in general. But I don't feel like I've necessarily done anything different."