Crew chief jokes about what would've happened if Chase Briscoe lost at Las Vegas

Crew chief James Small was asked Sunday evening what he was thinking about during the closing laps of Sunday's South Point 400 as his driver, Chase Briscoe, tried to hold off Kyle Larson for the win. 

"Better mark me up on murder charges," Small joked. "I was a little worried I was going to have to throw him off this building if he gave this one away after last week."

Briscoe couldn't hold off Larson last week at Kansas. He did so on Sunday at Las Vegas after previously fending off Bubba Wallace earlier in the race's final run. 

"Thankfully found a way to hang on," Small said. "I look back at all of our wins. They’ve all come down to the end of the race like that. He doesn’t like making it easy on us, that’s for sure."

Briscoe had either Wallace or Larson breathing down his neck for the entirety of the final run, and Small was right: it was not an easy victory for Briscoe to pull off. 

"I put the pressure on myself even after last week," Briscoe said. "You don’t want your guys to lose confidence in you. I felt like after last week, like, I drove to the lead, and you lose the race with six to go. I don’t really feel like I made a mistake per se last week. I mean, I was just really loose, and I could have done a better job defending Larson, but still, you don’t want it to be two weeks in a row where you lose a race in the last five to 10 laps.

"If I would have somehow lost the race, I would have been black and blue getting on the plane pretty easily. Yeah, it worked out."

Can Chase Briscoe still win the Cup Series championship?

Briscoe's victory put him sixth in the standings, 84 points back of Larson for the lead with five races left in the season. 

It will be quite an uphill battle for the No. 19 team to win the title. He'll have to make up 17 points per race on Larson to have a shot come Homestead. 

But it's certainly possible for a driver to make up such a deficit if they keep winning. 

"Look, it’s still going to be extremely, extremely difficult, but I at least kept myself in the ballgame," Briscoe said. "If you’re 120 out with five [races] — it’s just — I mean, it’s mathematically possible, but it’s just so hard to do that.

"Yeah, just kept ourselves in the ballgame. That’s ultimately all you can ask for when you’ve had kind of the start that we’ve had is to every week when you go home on Monday and you want to wake up, you want to at least be mathematically still possible. Some guys can’t say that right now. We at least can do that."

"Keep winning. Pretty simple," Small said. "If [Larson is] going to keep having the days he’s having, the only way you’re going to close the gap is win. Obviously, you know, you look last week. I think it was like a 44-point swing. If we had won and not finished fourth and he had finished second, blah, blah, blah. So it can change so quickly. As Coach [Joe Gibbs] said, I think winning is going to be huge. Just got to hope some of the other guys start to have some bad luck or issues."

With another intermediate track in Charlotte next up on the schedule, there's another opportunity for Briscoe to take a chunk out of Larson's lead — if he can get back to victory lane.

Quotes provided by NASCAR Media.