● Fresh off a top-five finish a in the Round of 12 opener of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, Chase Briscoe returns to Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway ninth in the standings, just four points below the cutline to advance to the Round of 8. The driver of the Magical Vacation Planner Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) finished 37th in this year’s April race at Talladega after an accident on lap 56 ended his bid.
● In three Cup Series starts at Talladega, Briscoe has a best finish of 11th, earned on April 25, 2021. He has four NASCAR Xfinity Series starts (best finish of fourth in April 2019), one Camping World Truck Series start (22nd-place result in October 2017), and one ARCA Menards Series start (third-place finish in April 2016) at the 2.66-mile oval.
● Briscoe has earned four top-five finishes and five top-10s in 30 races this season, and he’s led 238 laps thus far compared to just 18 during his 2021 Rookie of the Year campaign. The 27-year-old driver earned his first Cup Series victory in his 40th career start March 13 at Phoenix Raceway. He scored his first Cup Series pole award June 5 at Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis.
● Riding along with Briscoe and the No. 14 SHR Ford Mustang this weekend is Magical Vacation Planners (MVP), which was founded by Jamie Ane Eubanks alongside her husband JJ, a former professional basketball player, as a storefront travel agency in 2006. Today, it is a company that provides one of the best vacation planning services in the industry. It operates through three branches: MVP Parks, MVP Cruising and MVP Getaways. The company provides its exclusive and personalized, stress-free planning service at no additional expense to its clients, making the extensive array of Disney options and add-ons easy to understand and navigate. MVP actively seeks savings for its clients, monitoring early-morning releases of discounted room or vacation packages while also scouring existing reservations for price drops to where they can modify an existing reservation at the newfound lower price. MVP will also plan a family’s itinerary, expertly navigating Disney’s Genie+ and Lighting Lane systems to maximize resort and park times by avoiding long lines while also securing those premium Disney dining experiences that include coveted character meetings.
You’re in a good position within the playoffs headed to Talladega. Does it help to know you are only four points below the cutline?
“Thankfully, we aren’t in a massive points deficit going into this weekend. We made the best out of a tough situation to start in Texas and came out just outside of the top-eight in points. If we can keep doing that and just running the best race for us, I think we can continue in the playoffs. I don’t think anyone expected Texas to go the way that it did, but it was a nice primer for the chaos of Talladega.”
You’ve done well on superspeedways this year, even if you don’t have the results to show for it. Is there a confidence that comes with knowing you are capable of being up front and potentially winning on these types of tracks?
“I’m not sure. I’d like to say that I feel good about it, but there are so many unknowns. You never really know what you’re going to be up against. This weekend will be pretty similar to what we faced last weekend, just in terms of trying to avoid all of those things happening around us. I feel like I’ve gotten better at superspeedway racing over the years and we kind of saw that in the Daytona 500, but there’s not much you can control in these races, which we also saw at Daytona in August. Talladega is a different track. This car handles a little different there, but the concept of superspeedway racing is the same. Things happen so fast and it’s easy to end up in someone else’s mess, so I can’t make mistakes that are going to take us out of a chance to win and lock in or just have a good finish. I think our strategy is the same for the next few races, just run our best race and don’t do anything that can take us out of it. If it ends in a win, that’s great, but we really just can’t have a bad day.”
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