Four races into the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, the points standings are beginning to take shape. With each passing race, drivers drift closer to an accurate showing of where they’ll run down the stretch. Statistical anomalies are beginning to correct as the sample size grows.
Still, one glaring outlier remains. Chase Briscoe, a clear championship favorite going into the year, is nowhere near making the Chase. He has 22 races remaining to drastically improve his ranking, or risk missing out on a shot at his first career championship. Even if he does make the cut, his rough start may have already cost him critical points once the numbers are reset.
Exiting Phoenix Raceway, Briscoe is 33rd in the standings. Only two drivers who’ve started all four races are below him: Connor Zilisch and Cole Custer. Alex Bowman is also behind Briscoe, but that’s after missing one race so far due to a vertigo diagnosis.
So far the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team has had the speed that’s expected of them. Pure bad luck has repeatedly blocked them from their full potential. Three of four races so far, incidents and mechanical failures have forced the No. 19 Toyota into poor finishes.
One Hit After Another
The No. 19 gets into the wall!@chasebriscoe was running third at the time of this incident. pic.twitter.com/CeTAKp8AWz
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) March 8, 2026
The Daytona 500 was going fine until Briscoe’s race ended in a Lap 85 wreck. Next week at EchoPark Speedway in Atlanta Briscoe finished a more characteristic second place. Then at Circuit of the Americas his car lost a transaxle and he finished 37th. Phoenix was an opportunity to rebound – Briscoe’s first career win came at Phoenix after all – but a flat tire sent him hard into the wall during Stage 2. Another race, another 37th, another last place finish.
In two of those three bad races Briscoe appeared to have the speed to contend. He qualified second for the Daytona 500. At COTA, he drove from third to first in the first corner of the race and led eight laps.
“Just par for the course for how this year started,” Briscoe said after his Phoenix crash. “It was another car that was extremely fast, felt like we were certainly going to be in contention for the win and just another failure for us.”
As the field prepares for Week 5 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Chase Briscoe finds himself far outside the Chase picture. He’s 178 points below the cutoff line, which is currently 16th-place Brad Keselowski. There are no doubts about Briscoe’s ability to turn things around, but each week that the No. 19 team misses out on key points hauls makes their situation feel a bit more urgent.
