Chase Briscoe Confident After Advancing to Round of 12
12/05/2024 07:28 PM
By Seth Eggert, Associate Editor
BRISTOL, Tenn – Chase Briscoe kept Stewart-Haas Racing's championship hopes in their final season alive after advancing to the Round of 12 with a top-10 finish at Bristol Motor Speedway.
The Mitchell, IN native maintained his position throughout the Bass Pro Shops Night Race. Briscoe's No. 14 Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang Dark Horse never slipped outside of the top-10 in the 500-lap race. Although pit road speeding penalties for both Ty Gibbs and Martin Truex, Jr. aided his bid in moving on to the next round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. He took the checkered flag in eighth while both Gibbs and Truex finished 15th and 24th respectively.
Briscoe was unfazed by the deficit he had following a crash in the opening race of the Round of 16 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. He recalled the deficit after Atlanta was like the one, he had at Bristol when he last made the Playoffs in 2022. That season, he overcame that deficit to advance to the Round of 12 as well. This season, several months after the team announced it would close at the end of the season, he entered Bristol with a handful of points to spare.
"The only time I have had any concern the entire time is when I was sitting on the backstretch unbuckling after crashing out of Atlanta," Briscoe admitted. "We were sitting there at the airport, and it literally just showed minus 21 and I took a screenshot of it, sent it to our team guys and I said doable and that’s all I said.
"I mean, we were 21 or 19 out the last time we came to Bristol for the Cup race (in 2022) we made about that, so I wasn’t really concerned at all being 21 out and I felt really confident about it. I don’t want to be 21 down to start any round, but I wasn’t worried about it. If there’s any round, it was going to be okay, it was going to be that first one, just racing more guys and I knew that that that extra tracks, really good tracks for us. So, I feel good about it."
While Briscoe was unfazed by his points situation, the rearview camera on his NextGen car failed. That left him vulnerable with the fast-paced nature of the racing at 'The World's Fastest Half Mile.' Despite that vulnerability, Briscoe's spotter kept the competition at bay throughout the event.
Following the end of Stage 2, Briscoe was tied with Daniel Suarez and Truex for the final transfer spot. Both Suarez and Truex held the tiebreakers over the Ford Performance driver. That was until the pit road speeding penalty for the driver of the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry XSE dropped it down the running order.
With seventh and eighth place finishes in the two stages, Briscoe had an extra seven-point cushion over the Playoff cutline. When the checkered flag waved, he had 11-points over Gibbs, the first driver outside of the playoffs. After the reseeding, Briscoe is tied with Alex Bowman for 11th on the Playoff Grid, seven points below the cutline, held by Joey Logano.
Next for Briscoe is the Hollywood Casino 400 presented by ESPN Bet at Kansas Speedway. In seven starts at Kansas he has a best finish of 13th in the 2022 Playoff race.
The Hollywood Casino 400 presented by ESPN Bet at Kansas Speedway is scheduled for Sunday, September 29 at 3:00 p.m. ET on USA Network. The race will also be broadcast on both the Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.
