Denny Hamlin weighs Chase Briscoe, No. 19 team NASCAR Championship 4 potential

Denny Hamlin bested his teammate Chase Briscoe in qualifying to notch another pole for his No. 11 Toyota team. However, the wheelman of the No. 19 took control during the race and never looked back.

Briscoe won the Southern 500 for the second consecutive season, dominating in South Carolina. On the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin took some time to evaluate what the win meant for Briscoe, and just how far the first-year Joe Gibbs Racing driver can go in the playoffs.

“I do,” Hamlin responded, regarding whether the No. 19 Toyota team is a championship contender. “I think that, you know, they have all the tools available to them. Chase is certainly capable enough.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily a sleeper team anymore. I think this is a team that, certainly, you could look at and say — it’s one of the upper echelon (teams). You could add it to the top four or five that have been fastest all year. You could probably add (them) on into that.”

All told, it’s easy to see why Hamlin believes Briscoe is firmly in the championship conversation. He made a statement this past weekend, and the 30-year-old has upped his game over the second half of the season.

It’s been a heck of a run for Briscoe and the No. 19 team. He believes a switch flipped, and his group hasn’t looked back since: “The demeanor has definitely changed,” Briscoe stated, via The Teardown.

“I don’t remember exactly what week it was, but sometime over the last two months it flipped. Even with (crew chief) James [Small] — at the beginning of the year it was always, ‘You’ve got to be doing this different, you’re just not driving it right.’

“I remember after one practice we were texting back and forth, and he said, ‘The car’s not capable of doing what you need it to do. We’ve got to get it better for you, and we will get it better for you.’ And I was like, that’s different — I’ve never heard that before.

“From that moment on, I felt like at the beginning of the year, yeah, they said, ‘You’re our guy,’ but I hadn’t really proved myself yet. Now it’s like, ‘We’re going to bat for you. We think you’re the best guy for the job.’”

Hamlin is a believer in his teammate’s talent, and it’s getting easier to see why. Briscoe is locked in to the Round of 12, and now that we know what he’s capable of, the only question is how far he can go in the playoffs.