It was August 15, 2021, when Chase Briscoe was a rookie driving the No. 14 Ford for Stewart-Haas Racing. The Verizon 200 at the Brickyard on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course was his home race. He started on the front row, led laps, then brake issues dropped him deep in the field. A late caution off a short pit stop brought him back to the front row. One restart later, he was side by side with Denny Hamlin for the lead. What happened next became one of the most debated moments of that season.
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“I would take a lie detector right now on the show just to verify it,” Chase Briscoe said on the Actions Detrimental podcast.
He is still explaining himself four years later. Going into Turn 1 on the overtime restart, Hamlin ran Chase Briscoe wide. Briscoe went completely off the circuit onto the grass. With no way back on cleanly, he kept his foot down, cut the corner, and rejoined right behind Hamlin. NASCAR hit him with a stop-and-go penalty instantly. His team never relayed it to him in time.
“I didn’t know I had the penalty in the first place,” Briscoe said.
Still racing for what he thought was a winnable lead, Briscoe stayed on Hamlin’s bumper. He knew this section of the track well. In the Xfinity Series the year before, it was his strongest part of the circuit.
“I would murder the field through there,” Chase Briscoe said. “I would carry partial throttle, and I would just run straight across them.”
Going into Turn 8, he was right on Hamlin’s rear bumper. Hamlin turned left to set up for Turn 10. Briscoe went right to pass. They made contact. Hamlin spun into the grass. AJ Allmendinger slipped through to win. Briscoe was parked for not serving the pass-through penalty and finished 26th.
Hamlin came down to pit road to confront Briscoe. He was furious a penalized car had cost him a race he was leading. NASCAR confirmed the penalty had been issued but noted very little time passed between the call and the crash. Not everyone in the garage read the situation the same way.
Coming off the track, Briscoe did not know what was waiting for him. What he heard first was not criticism.
“Tony’s like, man, I’m proud of you for staying your ground,” Briscoe recalled. “I’m thinking to that, like, didn’t wreck him on purpose, but yeah, buddy, yeah, you got it.”
Stewart’s backing gave Chase Briscoe standing in the garage at a moment that could have gone the other way. The NASCAR community was split. Some called it a rookie caught in a bad spot. Others were convinced it was deliberate. Hamlin eventually conceded it was not malicious. By then, the story had already taken on a life of its own.
It still has one. Fans walk up to Briscoe at racetracks and thank him for it.
“I’m like, all right, yeah, okay, thanks,” Briscoe said. “Yeah, I didn’t do it on purpose, but that works.”
To a section of the fan base that has never warmed to Hamlin, the wreck made Chase Briscoe a folk hero. For Briscoe himself, it remains the race he could not win no matter what happened. Four years on, he is still clearing his name.