Chase Briscoe's win in Las Vegas keeps his NASCAR Cup Series championship hopes alive

LAS VEGAS (AP) — If anyone thought Chase Briscoe was going to quietly slip out of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff picture, they clearly forgot to factor in his intermediate track pedigree.

Holding off a furious late-race charge from current points leader Kyle Larson and dicing through dense lapped traffic, Briscoe cashed in a jackpot performance at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to win the South Point 400.

The victory wasn’t just a validation of Joe Gibbs Racing’s 1.5-mile program — it kept Briscoe’s championship hopes alive heading into the final stretch of the season.

Leading a race-high 175 laps, Briscoe managed the clean-air dynamics flawlessly, executing a sweep of Stage 1 and Stage 2 to collect a maximum 75 total race points.

Yet, the victory was far from easy. With fewer than 35 laps to go, a thick wall of lapped traffic stacked up, threatening to erase Briscoe’s lead. A charging pack that included Bubba Wallace, Tyler Reddick, and Larson closed the gap to bumper-to-bumper margins.

“I thought I was in big trouble,” Briscoe said. “I made a pretty late block on Bubba entering Turn 1. He was an inch away from getting me, and if that happens, I don’t win. Once you lose that clean air, it’s just so hard to get back.”

For Briscoe and crew chief James Small, the victory provided redemption after a string of near-misses and point losses in recent weeks. Entering Las Vegas facing a 123-point deficit, winning was virtually the only currency that mattered. Briscoe jumped from eighth to sixth in the standings with the win and is 80 points behind Larson.

“If we can have more solid weeks, anything’s possible,” Small said. “We’ve still got some really good tracks coming up for us, so we’re definitely not out of it. ... Phoenix is gonna be a great track for us, and we get Homestead.”

Briscoe isn’t ready to concede his place in the title hunt, either.

“It’s still a long way to go, but we kept ourselves in the ball game,” Briscoe said. “When you go home on Monday, you just want to wake up and mathematically still be in the mix. We still have a couple of irons in the fire.”

Early in the race, Larson’s Hendrick Motorsports entry suffered handling issues that required a lengthy 26-second green-flag pit stop for rear suspension adjustments. The setback dropped Larson a lap down and back to 32nd position.

Yet Larson clawed his way back. After regaining the lead lap under caution, Larson cut through the field over 200 laps, ultimately mounting a high-line assault on Briscoe over the final four laps.

“For the first half of Stage 1, our balance was completely off,” Larson said. “The rear suspension felt super tight and we were just fighting the car every lap. Cliff (Daniels) and the guys made a huge adjustment under pit stops during that caution on Lap 45 to get us back on the lead lap. Once we got the balance back, the car really came alive in the second half of the race.”

The Cup Series continues its playoff schedule on Sunday on the 1.5-mile oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina. Larson holds a 40-point advantage over second-place Denny Hamlin, with Christopher Bell 55 points back.

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