Chase Briscoe had never finished top 10 at Richmond in nine starts. Saturday night, he qualified second, led more laps than anyone, and had a three-second cushion with 39 laps left. The race was sitting right there in his hands. Then his brakes started fading, the car got loose, and Joey Logano did what Joey Logano does in late summer. That’s what Chase Briscoe recalled in his interview with Eddie Kalegi post-race.

“And yeah, it showed,” he said later. “I mean, they were good early in the race, good at the end of the race. Yeah, just typical late summer Joey Logano just coming up out of nowhere on you. So, yeah, just go on to the next one and see what we can do.”

Chase Briscoe passed pole-sitter Ryan Blaney on Lap 1 and went on to lead 171 of 400 laps. Blaney bounced back to dominate Stage 1, leading 60 of 70 laps. Logano took Stage 2 by over eight seconds. But in the final stage, Briscoe was the fastest car on the track. By Lap 305, he had a comfortable lead and the race looked settled.

Then with 39 laps left, Logano was in Briscoe’s rearview. He got within half a second by Lap 356. Lapped traffic showed up at the worst time. Logano went three-wide into Turn 1 alongside Chase Briscoe and Cole Custer, came out clean, and took the lead. Both drivers headed to pit road. Briscoe pushed too hard on entry, locked his fronts, and smoked the tires. Logano’s crew was perfect. Logano left first.

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He won by 0.392 seconds. For Briscoe, the loss stung more because of what Briscoe was up against all night. Before making the “late summer Joey Logano” remark, he also said this:

“I thought I was gonna get a sandwich there for a lot of the race. I think it was at the start of stage two, it was literally all four of them, and I was the only one in the top five outside of them.”

Ford had the race on paper. Two stage wins, the race win, and three cars in the top 10. Logano won, Austin Cindric went third, Josh Berry eighth. Toyota had the better long-run pace but not the result.

Chase Briscoe led the most laps, Denny Hamlin came fourth, Christopher Bell seventh. Chevrolet showed up but never really threatened. Chase Elliott was fifth, Kyle Larson sixth, both quiet nights.

Still, Chase Briscoe walked away with the runner-up finish that locked him into the NASCAR postseason. At a track where he had nothing to show for nine previous starts, second place was a result worth keeping.

He is not wrong in his assessment of Logano, though. The driver’s team gets into it right around the July-August period. It happens almost every year. In 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024, that second-half surge carried Logano to the Championship 4. He won the title in three of them.

2026 was no different in the early going. Logano had rough stretches at Darlington, Talladega, Texas, and Watkins Glen. He was not a factor in those races. Richmond was the reset button. Chase Briscoe even noticed it in real time during the race. He mentioned this:

“Joey’s car was odd. It was kind of like on in a sense where he had two runs that he was just phenomenal, and then the rest he was just same as all of us.”

That is the Logano pattern in one observation. Not dominant for 400 laps. Just dominant when it matters. Saturday night at Richmond, it mattered.