LOUDON, NH — Kyle Larson saw an opportunity and, without hesitation, took the business over to his friend and rival, Christopher Bell, last Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
When Bell accidentally announced the news at a press conference that his future teammate, Chase Briscoe, would be driving the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in 2025, it quickly became a trending topic on stock car racing site X, formerly known as Twitter.
Larson followed suit, quickly whipping out his phone and creating one of the most memorable social media posts in years (complete with a killer hashtag). Goodbye, Chase Elliott? Summary: During Bell’s media session on Friday, he spilled the beans, saying that “The Chase” will be in the No. 19 car next year after incumbent Martin Truex Jr. retires from full-time racing at the end of 2024.
Bell, who was already considered the team’s top prospect before the weekend, effectively confirmed Briscoe’s 2025 status with his unintentional admission before the team announced the news on Tuesday. “I was really proud of it,” Larson said Saturday about his post at NHMS. “I was able to type it up really fast. I couldn’t wait to squash it. I think it was before I sent out the tweet.” I was (expletive) dying laughing because that was, I mean, that’s the greatest way to announce somebody coming to a team.
I’m sure PR departments (were) planning this extravagant, very professional thing, but they got way more clicks for that than once they finally (did) announce it.”
All mainstays of the dirt-racing ranks, the trio of Bell, Briscoe and Larson are all quite familiar with each other, and bringing the Indiana native into the fold to pair with Bell, Ty Gibbs and Denny Hamlin on a championship-capable organization should provide plenty of battles between them for years to come.
It’s a bit of a revamped, younger lineup for JGR than we’ve seen in years; the team as recently as 2016 featured a lineup of Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth — at the time, four of the most tenured drivers in the sport and all current or future NASCAR Hall of Famers.
Leading into next season, JGR’s three fresh-ish faces will have fewer than 400 Cup Series starts combined. It’s not too dissimilar of a transformation that Hendrick Motorsports underwent over the past decade, seeing its own Hall of Famers Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson all step out of the car in 2015, ’17 and ’20, respectively.
Since then, the team has invested in younger, yet still highly productive, talent, solidifying its core with Larson, Alex Bowman, William Byron and, of course, its very own “Chase,” Elliott. It’s not hard to imagine each of these venerable four-car stables competing annually in the Cup Series as elite 1A and 1B organizations for the next decade, perhaps even trading Bill France Cups from shop to shop each year. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, that’s it (a solid, young foundation for the future of JGR).
And then there’s the old guys who will probably be gone in a few years, and yeah,” Larson joked about the 43-year-old Hamlin. “I think they definitely have a good lineup. But when you look at the Hendrick Motorsports lineup, I think it’s going to be by far the strongest lineup going forward. We’re all in our early 30s or late 20s and, yeah, we’ve had a lot of wins and championships and stuff, so it’s great to see where the sport is at right now.”
