JOLIET, IL — With all the attention on Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick and the way they’ve racked up NASCAR Cup Series wins for Toyota, it’s been easy to overlook Chase Briscoe.
Not so much anymore.
Following up on a runner-up finish on the Sonoma Raceway road course in California, Briscoe capped a popular weekend at Chicagoland Speedway with his first victory of the season July 5.
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“We have not been as consistent, I would say, as [Hamlin and Reddick],” said Briscoe, who won three races and finished third in the 2025 championship. “But from a speed standpoint, I feel like we’ve been right here with them.”
Briscoe, 31, held off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell, who also was chasing his first win of the season, by .276 seconds. Hamlin took third, giving team owner Joe Gibbs the top three spots in the finishing order on a night Toyotas claimed seven of the top 10.
The manufacturer has won 12 of the first 19 races, led by Reddick with five and Hamlin with four.
“It was definitely burning me up not winning, more than ever before, especially just knowing that our cars are really fast,” said Briscoe, who won three times and finished third in the 2025 championship but had gone 20 races without a trip to victory lane.
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“There’s a couple that kind of slipped away this year, and when your teammates are winning it makes it worse as a competitor because you know they have equal opportunity to what you have and they’re performing better.
“So there’s definitely a lot of pressure to go and run good. And it ebbs and flows, right? Like a year from now the Toyotas could be way off and the Chevies and Fords could be unbelievable. So when you’re good, you have to take advantage of it.”
William Byron, who won the first two stages, finished fourth after leading a race-high 94 of the 267 laps. Alex Bowman, a Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet teammate of Byron’s, was fifth.
The 1.5-mile Chicagoland Speedway hosted 19 Cup races from 2001 to 2019 before being shuttered in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Road America, a Wisconsin road course 180 miles to the north, filled the spot on the post-COVID schedule for two seasons, and then NASCAR took the race to the streets of downtown Chicago for three years before returning to the oval.
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The 2027 schhedule has yet to be announced, but Gibbs said he couldn’t imagine not returning to Chicagoland.
“There’s been a lot put into this, and this part of America is huge for our sport,” Gibbs said. “I think from everybody’s standpoint, the reason we came back is a huge deal, and everybody recognizes that.
“And also here, we’re talking about the street race. So we’ll see what all happens. That’s out of my hands, that’s for sure. … Who knows? We may do both.”
Seats for the 47,000-seat grandstand sold out but not all were filled by the green flag. Rainstorms the two previous nights wreaked havoc on parking lots, leading to hours-long waits in traffic on the approaching roads.
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Those who made it saw a competitive race with 28 lead changes among 13 drivers. The last of them, though, came via pit strategy and execution, when Briscoe pitted a lap before Byron and jumped from third to first on their final stop.
“That’s part of why I love my job, calling races and having those opportunities,” crew chief James Small said of the decision. “The green flag cycle and the strategy section of it makes it so much fun.”
JOLIET, ILLINOIS – JULY 05: Chase Briscoe, driver of the #19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota, leads Christopher Bell, driver of the #20 SAIA Freight + Logistics Toyota, to win the NASCAR Cup Series eero 400 at Chicagoland Speedway on July 05, 2026 in Joliet, Illinois. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
Bell, driving with a soft cast on his broken left wrist, sat 1.2 seconds behind when he took second from Byron with 19 laps to go. Bell closed to Briscoe’s bumper but could never pull alongside.
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“I was sideways and drifting on exit a lot of the time,” Briscoe said. “It was a super intense battle.
“Out of all the people that were going to catch me, I was glad it was him just because I knew he was going to race me super clean, obviously. It was a lot of fun, for sure.”
Challenging for a win didn’t look likely when Bell made contact with another car on pit road on his second pit stop, but his crew fixed the damage and put him back in contention.
“They made a great adjustment and got the car driving great the last run, but I was a straightaway-plus behind, it seemed like,” Bell said.
“We almost went to victory lane. Toyotas are fast. It seems like a monkey can drive them, so it’s just disappointing when you get beat by another monkey.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Chase Briscoe leads a Toyota train in NASCAR’s return to Chicagoland Speedway
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