The 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Chase is heating up, and Chase Briscoe is right in the thick of it. Fresh off a clutch victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where the No. 19 Toyota led 175 of 267 laps and held off Kyle Larson, Briscoe has the championship squarely in his sights. But the man calling the shots from the pit box, the one with the headset and the blood pressure, is the same guy who has been there through every high and every head-scratcher. His name is James Small, and if you don’t know him yet, you should.
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Who Is James Small and How Long Has He Been Chase Briscoe’s Crew Chief?
James Small is the crew chief for Chase Briscoe and the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team. The two were paired together ahead of the 2025 season after Martin Truex Jr. retired, and the fit wasn’t instantly seamless. But over time, it clicked. In their first year together, Briscoe won three races, earned the most poles in the field, and finished third in the championship standings, a career year for the driver and a statement season for the crew chief. Small enters 2026 with something to prove, not because he lacks a résumé, but because the loudest voices on the internet spent most of 2025 questioning whether he could call a race at all.
What Is James Small’s Background?
Small is an outlier in the NASCAR garage, and that’s part of what makes him fascinating. He was born in Melbourne, Australia, and motorsport was in the blood from day one. His father, Les Small, was a mechanic and team manager in the Australian touring car scene, and young James grew up around wrenches and race fuel.
He competed in BMX, go-karts, and Formula Ford as a teenager, but financial realities pushed him from the driver’s seat to the engineering side. He earned a mechanical engineering degree from Swinburne University of Technology and cut his teeth in Australia’s V8 Supercars, where he was part of a Bathurst 1000-winning effort in 2013. He’s now 43 years old, and that engineering mind is exactly what Briscoe leans on every single week.
How Did James Small Work His Way Up to the Pit Box?
The climb was not a straight line. Small arrived in the United States in late 2013 and landed an engineering role at Richard Childress Racing by 2014. He spent three years there learning the rhythms of stock-car racing before joining Furniture Row Racing in 2017 as the lead engineer for Erik Jones. He even served as an interim crew chief for two races that season, notching a third-place finish at Michigan and a top-10 at Watkins Glen.
From there, he moved to Martin Truex Jr.’s team and eventually took over the No. 19 pit box in 2020 after Cole Pearn departed. He won eight races with Truex and made the Championship 4 in 2021, but the partnership never quite recaptured the magic of that first run. When Truex retired, Small didn’t flinch. He embraced the challenge of a new driver and a new voice.
What Has James Small Won, and Where Does He Rank Among Crew Chiefs?
James Small has won a lot of races as a crew chief, 14 Cup Series wins between his time with Truex and Briscoe, but he has not yet won a championship in that role. He’s been close. The 2021 run with Truex ended with a runner-up finish in the standings, and the 2025 season with Briscoe ended with a third-place points finish and a trip to the Championship 4. NASCAR.com has framed his current challenge as a balancing act between winning and clinching, and Small seems to relish that pressure.
How Do Chase Briscoe and James Small Work Together?
This is where the story gets good. Briscoe and Small are not buddies who finish each other’s sentences. They are two completely different people who had to learn how to communicate, and the early months of 2025 were bumpy. Small is blunt. He told reporters that Briscoe has a habit of “driving it until he sees Jesus,” and he meant it as both a compliment and a critique. But the respect is real. Small learned when to push and when to back off, and Briscoe learned to trust the engineer’s math even when his gut said otherwise. The results followed: three wins, a Championship 4 berth, and a working relationship that is built on accountability rather than comfort.
Has James Small Faced Penalties or Controversy?
Yes, but the story has a twist. After the 2025 Daytona 500, NASCAR dropped an L2-level penalty on the No. 19 team for a modified spoiler, slapping Small with a four-race suspension and a $100,000 fine. It looked like a disaster. But JGR appealed, and the National Motorsports Appeal Panel overturned the whole thing. The evidence showed it was a manufacturing issue, not a deliberate cheat, and Small never missed a race. The controversy faded, but it did reinforce something about Small: he doesn’t spend his time reading the comments.
What Is James Small’s Family Life and Net Worth?
Here’s what is confirmed: Small is 43, he’s an Australian native, and he’s settled into life in the NASCAR bubble. Beyond that, he keeps his personal life remarkably quiet. There’s no publicly verified information about a spouse or children, and guessing at a net worth would be irresponsible. What we do know is that Joe Gibbs Racing has kept him in the crew chief role because the results speak for themselves, and in this sport, that’s the only currency that really matters.
The 2026 Chase is entering its final stretch, and Briscoe is hunting. After back-to-back wins at Las Vegas and Charlotte, the No. 19 team has shown it can win under pressure, not just survive. If the pairing that took a few months to figure each other out can keep this run alive, James Small might finally get the one line missing from his résumé: Cup Series champion crew chief.