James Small and Chase Briscoe are ready to be what the other needs.
The crew chief and driver duo is gearing up for its first season together on the No. 19 Toyota at Joe Gibbs Racing. It’s slow going right now, given the approaching holidays and employees working through time off, but the bricks have been laid in the foundation in other ways. Briscoe paid visits to the race shop to begin the process of getting key access and a laptop, and he and Small are racking up the phone calls.
When things ramp up later in the winter and then into race season, it will be a change of pace for both. For Small, it starts with having his driver present.
“It’s going to be really great to actually have somebody, for one, who lives in North Carolina and two, comes into the shop multiple times a week,” Small told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio earlier this week. “We can actually build the team around him and have him in the process of developing the setup each week and helping us be better as well.
“We’re all really excited to have him on board, and I think it’s going to be a big gain for the [No.] 19 team.”
Small was the leader for Martin Truex Jr. for the last five seasons. Truex retired from full-time competition and does not primarily live in North Carolina — he was remote during weekly team debriefs.
Briscoe, meanwhile, acknowledges he’s someone who likes to be in the race shop. Over the last seven years at Stewart-Haas Racing, Briscoe went to the shop at least once or twice a week. It might be tricker to do that with three young children now, and he’s unsure what his Gibbs schedule is going to look like, but he won’t be a stranger.
“I’m involved,” Briscoe said. “But it is a little bit easier because I do live in North Carolina, where I think Martin is in Florida or New Jersey, so it does make it a little bit easier from that standpoint just to be acclimated with the team guys. James was telling me that I don’t think they’ve done sim for like three years just because Martin’s never been there. From that standpoint, I know he’s excited to be able to do sim because he feels like it’s going to make them better.
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“But I’m definitely [someone] who tries to build that relationship with my team guys. I even told my wife already that in December and January, I’m going to be at the shop a lot just trying to get that communication with them and relationship going because I feel it goes such a long way.”
It’s already been an intense transition for Briscoe to visit the race shop. It’s different from what he is used to and more confusing to navigate. One day, he had to have Small help him get to the marketing department because the different hallways and stairways confused him.
The first week of December will be when Briscoe next goes to the shop, and he’ll then have four consecutive days of sim work. In the meantime, the relationship building between Briscoe and Small continues in other ways.
“It’s been really good,” Briscoe said. “The hardest part for me is just understanding him. I have such a hard time understanding him; I can’t imagine in a race situation what it’s going to be like.
“But it’s been really, really good. We haven’t spent a ton of time together, but we have talked on the phone a lot. Even in the last two or three weeks of the season, he made it a point always on Mondays just to call and talk through my weekend and see what I fought and what struggles and see if it lined up with anything they had.
“I feel like we get along really well. Obviously, we haven’t been in [a] competition standpoint yet. We’ve just been away from the racetrack. But so far, everything’s been really good.”