Chase Briscoe’s crew chief, James Small, reacted to the JGR standout losing a tire as the Cup Series practice kicked off at Phoenix Raceway. Small wasn’t worried as he believed that the No. 19 team had what it takes to rewrite the narrative.Briscoe is currently in his maiden season with Joe Gibbs Racing. He is one of the championship contenders and sits at the top of the championship driver standings. 35 races into the season, the driver has amassed three wins, 15 top fives, and 19 top-10 finishes. Briscoe also has seven poles to his credit.During a pre-race media session at Phoenix, Small pinpointed the reasons behind Chase Briscoe’s tire debacle. As quoted by Jeff Gluck of The Athletic on X, less air, excessive camber (the vertical tilt of a wheel), and an overly aggressive driving style were the three factors responsible for Briscoe’s lacklustrer session.“Too low on air, too much camber, just too aggressive” — James Small, who says he’s “not worried one bit” and they’ll adjust their setups,” Gluck wrote in his post (on X, formerly known as Twitter).Chase Briscoe is the only driver on the 2025 Championship 4 roster who hasn’t raced for the title before. The only other JGR driver in the mix is Denny Hamlin, the longest-tenured driver without a championship. In a statement Chase Briscoe expressed his thoughts about competing for the NASCAR Cup Series championship title.“It would mean a lot to do it in year one, just with everything, with Coach (Joe Gibbs) obviously taking a chance on me. Just to start our tenure off together winning a championship would be pretty cool, but it would certainly make the expectations going forward way harder.”All eyes are now on Phoenix, which will host Sunday’s (November 2) Championship race. Fans can watch the 312-lap event on Peacock (7:30 pm ET onwards) or listen to live radio updates on MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.Chase Briscoe finds a silver lining amid his recent Phoenix miseryChase Briscoe didn’t have the best start to his weekend at Phoenix Raceway. But he wasn’t the only one. Like him, several others, like Kyle Busch, Christopher Bell, AJ Allmendinger, Daniel Suárez, and Riley Herbst, suffered flat tires during practice.Perhaps Briscoe found comfort in the fact that his car wasn’t the only one on the field that suffered from mechanical issues.“Yeah, I guess it’s a good thing that it’s not just us, right?” Briscoe said during a post-practice interview with truTV. “It’s unfortunate it’s happening, but at least we’re not on an island by ourselves. Yeah, so I’m sure that James (Small, crew chief) and everybody on our Bass Pro Shops Tracker Toyota will figure out what we can do to help manage that on Sunday.”“Definitely alarming,” Briscoe continued. “This wasn’t a great practice for us just because we didn’t really get to run a lot because of the issues. We’ll get to work on it and see what we can do.”Besides Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin, it’s just Kyle Larson and William Byron in the playoff picture. The championship is going to be a showdown between the drivers from Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing.