After eight seasons driving a NASCAR Ford race car, Chase Briscoe had to swear allegiance to a rival manufacturer after his team, Stewart-Haas Racing, shuttered at the end of the 2024 racing season. Briscoe took up post with Toyota’s Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) at the start of 2025, and now, one month into the Cup Series season, he’s noticed something interesting: the Ford and Toyota race cars handle very differently.
According to a report from Autoweek, Briscoe said he had to shift his approach to driving after ditching Ford for Toyota. The Toyota TRD Camry corners differently than his old NASCAR Ford Mustang Dark Horse race car – a particularly interesting revelation, considering that all Next Gen racers are spec cars. Briscoe participated in a recent tire test, which gave him a chance to turn laps in his Toyota outside of a competition setting.
“The JGR cars drive way different than what I’m used to,” Briscoe said. “So that was the biggest thing today, just try to get myself more and more acclimated as to how their cars drive.”
He added, “How I approach going into the corner, and what I try to focus on, specifically, with just keeping the minimum speed way higher. That’s something in the past my car just couldn’t handle, doing some of the things this car can do with how much throttle I can carry. That’s something that was a learning curve last weekend (at Las Vegas).”
Briscoe says that he’s tried to emulate the driving styles from his teammates at JGR. They “obviously have it figured out at a mile-and-a-half” racetrack, and he wants to set himself up for success.
Briscoe scored the second-fastest time during Daytona 500 qualifying, starting in second place for the season-opening race alongside fellow NASCAR Ford driver Austin Cindric. While he finished fourth at Daytona, he has struggled a bit since then, with a best finish of 14th at Circuit of the Americas thus far.
So far this season, only one Ford has visited Victory Lane, when Josh Berry took the No. 21 Mustang to the win at Las Vegas.
Comment
No big loss for Ford he was a little disappointing with HAAS racing. He lost the xfinity title to Cindric . I will say this he won in all series he drove in Fords,ARCA XFINITY and CUP .