What was the deal with Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe's Iowa brakes?
Within moments of hitting the track on Saturday at Iowa Speedway, Denny Hamlin realized he had a problem and it was one that crew chief Chris Gayle recognized as one that could potentially end their race before it began. They didn’t have adequate or consistent brake pressure. Their Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Chase Briscoe, also started suffering from similar problems and crew chief James ... Keep…
On Saturday at Iowa Speedway, three teams – Denny Hamlin's with Joe Gibbs Racing, Chase Briscoe's with 23XI Racing, and Riley Herbst's with 23XI – encountered significant brake issues that could have potentially ended their races prematurely. Hamlin and Briscoe both experienced severely compromised brake pressure by Lap 3 and by the start of the second stage, respectively.
Their respective crew chiefs, Chris Gayle and James Small, agreed that the situation was dire, with Hamlin later admitting he would have been satisfied with just a top 25 finish. The teams were allowed to bleed their brake lines and change cracked rotors, but not to switch rotor types mid-race. Hamlin's team also changed brake coolant ducts, resulting in a penalty that didn't impact his qualifying position.
Small was unable to change his pads despite them being "destroyed." While Hamlin and Briscoe's situations were grim, their teams managed to eke out fifth and sixth-place finishes, albeit at a significant physical cost. The teams ran a different brake pad combination than their competitors, which proved to be problematic in Iowa conditions.
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