“These guys are on pins and needles, that’s for sure,” a disappointed Chase Briscoe said as he ended his day in the Quaker State 400 in Atlanta. As Stewart-Haas Racing nears its final chapter, the team’s employees are clinging to a last chance at glory. Unfortunately, Tony Stewart’s decision might have backfired. Chase Briscoe, hoping for a strong performance in Atlanta, faced unexpected trouble during the Quaker State 400.

Things took a turn when Kyle Larson lost control bizarrely on lap 56, setting off a chain of mishaps. As Hendrick Motorsports drivers struggled with car handling issues, it seems it wasn’t easy for the SHR drivers as well. NASCAR insiders have uncovered that the issues go beyond just bad luck, revealing deeper problems within the SHR team.

How did “Spotters” ruin Tony Stewart & Co.’s round of 12 chances?

Atlanta Motor Speedway, known for its fiery wrecks, demands constant vigilance from drivers and their spotters. And, last Sunday’s chaos wasn’t solely because of Kyle Larson; it seemed to unravel deeper issues for Tony Stewart’s team. During the first stage, Larson lost control of his No. 5 Chevy in Turns 1 and 2, slamming into the wall at high speed. As several cars narrowly avoided the wreck, Chase Briscoe couldn’t escape, crashing his No. 14 Ford into Larson and adding to the smoke and fire.

In the September 10 episode of ‘Door, Bumper, Clear,’ Freddie Kraft, T.J. Majors, and Brett Griffin delved into Tony Stewart and Briscoe’s troubles, pointing to issues within the No. 14 crew. Initially, Bubba Wallace’s spotter, Freddie Kraft, analyzed Larson’s predicament, setting the stage for a closer look at the team’s broader problems.

He said, “We saw at the last race there, if you got offset to the right, you could get in a tricky aero spot where it would just snap…And that’s what it looked like to me. He was offset about half a car to the right of the 12…it just snapped on him.” Then Freddie Kraft began the dissection of Briscoe’s mishap. He said, “I know Briscoe hit him hard, but there was a lot of guys that could have potentially hit him hard.”

Brett Griffin picked up from there and went on to criticize the No. 14 team’s negligence. “What was odd to me…not only did they come close to him, they weren’t even lifting. It’s like they had no idea there was a wreck. So I don’t know what the spotters did or didn’t see…But when you have a guy at Cup level get hit that hard 5 seconds after he makes contact with a wall…there were way too many cars going way too fast by him…People were making errors.” 

So that may have ultimately led to Tony Stewart potentially losing the last chance at a third SHR championship. Griffin continued: “If they had a spotter perspective of that wreck, the viewers would have learned something right there.” And the No. 14 spotter may have overlooked one crucial task, as Kraft pointed out.

Spotters are the “eyes in the sky” for NASCAR drivers, as they say. What they see on the racetrack and report over the radio can potentially save drivers from terrifying wrecks. Certain tracks require special adjustments; for example, spotters usually use binoculars to monitor 2-3 car lengths of their drivers.

But this technical aid can sometimes be a hindrance as the vision becomes too narrow to notice chaotic events occurring elsewhere. That is what Brett Griffin emphasized about Atlanta Motor Speedway. “In Atlanta, when we put our binoculars on, we are way tighter than we are at Daytona, Talladega.” That is probably the mistake that Joe Campbell, long-time spotter for SHR, must have made last Sunday.

Freddie Kraft had a personal story involving Bubba Wallace to support this argument. “The first race there, we had a stack-up into 3 and it just started out of my peripheral by the time it got in. We didn’t wreck, it was just late…check up harder than we needed to probably. And he’s like, ‘Man you using binoculars?’ I was like, yeah. He’s like I gotta stop. That’s what happens…you got guys racing especially at the end of a stage…you’re in your binoculars, and you’re only going to see 2 or 3 rows around you, and this guy’s wrecked a quarter mile in front of you.” So how did the wreck affect the playoff picture?

Crash leaves Kyle Larson out of his comfortable spot on the standings

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Kyle Larson was in third place through Turns 1 and 2 at Lap 56 when his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet snapped loose in the center of the turn. An overcorrection shot Larson nose-first into the outside retaining SAFER barrier and resulted in a skid. Briscoe, who was 14th at that point across the start/finish line before the incident, could not avoid Larson’s back bumper, resulting in a race-ending damage for the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.

“There was no warning at all. If anything, I was getting tighter and tighter. Yeah, it just caught me way off guard. I was never once, even in that same corner, like loose. It just started stepping out and I overcorrected and yeah, just overcorrected,” Larson said after he was evaluated and released from the infield care center. He also added that he felt fine and thanked HMS and NASCAR for the safety.

After the wreck, neither of the drivers could continue with the race. Larson was credited with a 37th-place finish and Briscoe 38th, last, and both were awarded just one point in Sunday’s race. It was Larson’s fifth DNF of the season and his second in the last four races. It is also Briscoe’s second DNF in the last four races and his third of the season. This dramatically shuffled the playoff picture.

Larson entered the Playoffs as the No. 1 seed with a 35-point advantage above the elimination line. Briscoe, who earned his way to the postseason with a win in the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on September 1 in the regular-season finale, entered 13th in the playoff standings, tied with Alex Bowman and Harrison Burton but below the elimination line.

After Sunday’s race, Larson stood on the 10th position, 15 points above the elimination line. On the other hand, Briscoe slipped to the 16th place and last on the playoff grid, 21 points behind Ty Gibbs, who holds the 12th and final transfer spot with two races remaining in the round of 16.

“That’s NASCAR, right? You can be on top one week and then you can be at the very bottom of the mountain the next. Unfortunately, our car, I thought, was an adjustment away from being pretty good. We weren’t very good at all balance-wise but I felt like I was able to run around the seventh- to 12th-place guys,” Briscoe told reporters after the race.

“I was trying to watch my outside getting into Turn 1 and I was probably a little late to seeing the No. 5 car wrecking, I didn’t really expect anyone to wreck because they weren’t two-wide. I saw the smoke and was trying to slow down, I knew he was coming down the race track. I just kept trying to feed the car left to slow it down and I just couldn’t get left quick enough,” he further added about his take on the crash.

The Round of 16 will have two more races at Watkins Glen International (September 15) and Bristol Motor Speedway (September 21). The bottom four drivers without a victory in the 16-driver grid will be eliminated from championship contention following the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol. It remains to be seen how Briscoe and Larson recover from this setback in the upcoming races.