It was a rough Saturday night for Chase Briscoe, crew chief James Small and the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
First, Briscoe launched without much speed and even lost the draft in the first green flag run of the race. After making adjustments, Briscoe was then caught up in the massive 18-car crash that undoubtably changed the course of the race.
Small and his traveling road crew spent quite awhile making repairs with the hopes of returning to the track and gaining some positions and points before NASCAR shut them down and declared them out of the race.
In real-time, Briscoe himself expressed confusion over the matter.
“Yeah, I don’t know how bad our damage was,” Briscoe said. “They were fixing it, and we were about ready to go, and I guess NASCAR came over there and saw that our chassis was broke or bent or something and were like, you can’t go back out. So, kind of a waste of 30 minutes working on it.
“Just unfortunate night for our Bass Pro Shops Toyota. Kind of missed the balance at the beginning and was behind, and then that big wreck – had nowhere to go. … Just unfortunate day for us.”
Read more: What happened in the race?
During his Actions Detrimental podcast on Monday, Denny Hamlin said Small was very animated when NASCAR told them to cease making repairs because they were out of the race. Recall that Hamlin was also caught up in the wreck but later returned to the track to accomplish what his teammates were trying to do.
“I saw James Small and one of the head NASCAR officials nose to nose when they told him he was done,” Hamlin said. “They had been working on that 19-car for an hour. He must have told James that they were done because something was bent that is not replaceable. … When I pulled in, the NASCAR officials were kind of all over the car. …They worked for a solid hour before they were told, ‘No, you’re done.’ James Small was pissed, I mean pissed.”
With that said, Small has a notoriously terse personality even when things are going well and Hamlin pointed out that intensity as well.
“I think he wakes up pissed,” Hamlin said. “I love his attitude, personally. He’s awesome. I looked at the 19-car, I was very surprised to see them towed into the garage. It looked fine to me. I don’t know what all they had damaged, but it was something that was catastrophic, apparently.”
