Denny Hamlin evaluates Chase Briscoe 2026 championship chances after unfortunate start to season

Chase Briscoe, coming off a career year in 2025, was viewed as one of the NASCAR Cup Series championship favorites heading into 2026. Unfortunately for Briscoe, he’s already dug himself a deep hole to climb out of after just four races.

Briscoe currently sits 33rd in the points standings. The speed has been there; he’s led 58 laps so far, but finishing races has been an issue. Under The Chase format, even making the 16-car field doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll be in contention for the championship. More than likely, the champion will come from one of the top-five seeds.

So, have Briscoe’s championship hopes already passed him by? Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin isn’t ready to go that far.

“He’s gotta get hot,” Hamlin said Monday on Actions Detrimental. “Listen, if he goes, and he wins two of the next five races and stacks some top 5s and 10s in the other ones, I think we’re talking, ‘look at this charge he just made, he’s only 100 out of the points lead.’ [It’s] a little too early for that.”

Chase Briscoe can’t catch a break

The worst part of all for Briscoe is that everything has been out of his control. A wreck took him out at Daytona. He had a strong car at COTA until his No. 19 Toyota suffered a transaxle failure. This past Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, it was a tire failure that ended his run.

Briscoe can’t catch a break. You could look at it and say Briscoe is getting all of his stinkers out early. If he gets to performing like he did last season, he should be fine. But in racing, it’s hard to say the bad days are completely behind him. Hamlin certainly isn’t convinced.

“I don’t think so, but it’ll take some work, right?” Hamlin said. “Because if your championship contenders — the guys who are top-five in the regular season — all of them are gonna have five, six really bad weeks. Now, did Chase get his four all [out of the way]? You would think probably not. The likelihood and the odds are he’s still gonna have more sprinkled in just like everybody else.

“That’s the downside of having them all at the beginning of the season is that looks horrible, but there will be others. Tyler Reddick will have five or six really bad finishes. That’s the nature of stock car racing. It just hasn’t happened yet, so it looks worse than it actually is.”