A few months ago, Christopher Bell probably felt like crawling into a ditch and hiding. To set up the scene, Stewart-Haas Racing announced that it was selling most of its charters. Later on, Joe Gibbs Racing driver Martin Truex Jr. announced that he was retiring at the end of the season. With those two parameters in place, rumors emerged that SHR driver Chase Briscoe was the favorite to replace Truex Jr. at Joe Gibbs Racing.

Ahead of the Cup race at New Hampshire, Bell spoke about taking on a bigger role in the team. That was when he accidentally revealed that Chase was coming into the team. Now there are two Chases in the NASCAR Cup Series, and there was no way that it would be Chase Elliott as he is Hendrick Motorsports’ franchise driver. So, by the process of elimination, the Chase in question had to be Chase Briscoe.

Where was Chase Briscoe when Bell spilled the beans?

Of course, it didn’t take long for the incident to go viral on social media. Fortunately, many people saw the funny side of it and Bell wasn’t given too hard a time. Briscoe himself found the incident pretty funny and had a hilarious story to go with it.

Briscoe told Dinner with Racers, “That whole thing is pretty funny. At New Hampshire, there’s no signal. As soon as you get outside the motorhome lot, we don’t have StarLinks… I was going around in a sprint car and Christopher is parked across from me. So I go over there and I talk to him. He’s joking around and he obviously knows I’m going over there [Joe Gibbs Racing]. We’re talking and I’m like, ‘I got to go to the sprint car race, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.’ As we’re pulling out of the motorhome lot, I get this text message from Christopher. All it says is, ‘Chase, I really f–ed up, I’m sorry.’ I was like, I didn’t know what he was talking about. 

The Indiana native didn’t know what the fuss was about. When Bell texted him to confess his lapse of judgment, Briscoe thought that Bell had ‘said something stupid’. While was getting a few practice runs at a sprint car track, the area was a networking dead zone. So when the media caught up to the #14 driver, Chase Briscoe was not deliberately playing dumb.

“I thought he just maybe said something stupid… I’m at the sprint car track and this reporter comes up to me and he’s like ‘What do you think about what Christopher said earlier?’, I’m like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’. He goes ‘Oh, he said you’re going to JGR next year… His phone worked, he showed me the clip and it was really funny,” added Briscoe.

However, that was how Briscoe found out he was announced as a JGR driver. When he saw the clip of Bell’s slip-up and his subsequent realization, the 30-year-old found it hilarious. In the immediate aftermath, the poor driver had to deal with the fallout of the reveal. Namely, his phone getting bombarded by people wondering if what Bell said was true.

In a way, he was thankful to Christopher Bell

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In today’s day and age, people hate spoilers and the ones who spoil things are usually trolled or people are mad at them. Surprisingly, Chase Briscoe wasn’t mad at Bell at all. The duo go way back as childhood friends. Briscoe said, “I’ve known Christopher since I was eleven… He used to come spend the night at my house and truthfully he’s probably been a big part of why I’m even sitting here.”

So when Bell blurted the news, it meant that NASCAR hadn’t seen the last of Briscoe as the threat was looming with SHR shutting shop. Furthermore, it was Christopher Bell who encouraged the Indiana native to throw his hat in the JGR ring. “He told me, ‘I’m on the inside and I can kind of see the writing on the wall,” said Briscoe. There was already an inkling that Martin Truex Jr. was going to call time on his career, so Bell encouraged the #14 driver to approach Joe Gibbs Racing. Bell even admitted that he would try his best to get him that #19 seat. ” He wanted me to be over there… which helped,” said Briscoe.

Now the childhood buddies will take on the Cup Series as teammates. Joe Gibbs Racing is coming off a tumultuous end of the 2024 season which saw them go winless in 18 races to close out the season with no drivers in the Championship 4. From 2019 to 2023, JGR had at least one driver from Martin Truex Jr. Denny Hamlin, or Christopher Bell in the final 4. With Briscoe replacing the veteran in 2024, and Hamlin changing his crew chief, JGR will hope for a much better 2025. How do you think Briscoe will perform at JGR?