● Chase Briscoe and the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang team for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) look to add to their string of three consecutive top-five finishes after a fourth-place effort last Sunday at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. Briscoe’s season started off slowly, but the 28-year-old who is now in his third year of NASCAR Cup Series competition has secured top-15 results in six of the last seven races, with four of those finishes inside the top-10.
● With 10 races complete in the 2023 season, Briscoe sits 15th in the driver standings, 88 points out of first.
● Briscoe has two Cup Series starts at Dover with a best finish of 13th earned in last year’s event at the concrete mile oval. The No. 14 Mahindra Tractors team finished inside the top-15 in eight of 10 events on tracks measuring 1 mile or less during the 2022 season. The only time Briscoe finished outside the top-15 was when he spun on the last lap of the Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway dirt race while challenging for the lead, and when his car caught on fire at Richmond (Va.) Raceway in August while running in the top-10.
● In 2020, the dirt racer from Mitchell, Indiana, found his way to victory lane at the Monster Mile in the second race of a NASCAR Xfinity Series Saturday-Sunday doubleheader. Briscoe started last in the Sunday race after going to a backup racecar and proceeded to lead three times for a race-high 107 laps en route to his sixth win of the season. He won the race by a commanding 2.463-second margin over second-place Ross Chastain.
● In total, Briscoe has five starts in the Xfinity Series at Dover, his win in 2020 among his three top-five finishes and four top-10s. He also made one NASCAR Truck Series start at Dover in June 2017, which resulted in a 12th-place finish after earning his first career NASCAR pole.
Your streak of top-five finishes continued at Talladega last weekend, and the team is showing a lot of consistency. How tough is it to keep up momentum at a track that is as physically demanding as Dover?
“It can be tough. It all starts with qualifying and getting that position up front to start with. You need track position, you need a fast car and you need a driver who is going to be on it. You have to drive hard every lap, so it’s very physically demanding and is definitely not a place where you can just ride around and come out with a good finish.”
What makes Dover such a “monster” of a track?
“It is very, very fast. The concrete surface always makes things interesting, and there are some areas of the track where it’s a little rough. You add in the G-forces you get with the steep banking and it gives you a place where you’ve almost got to do everything right or you’re done. You miss your line, you get lapped. Get a little too close to the wall and you’re being lapped or getting wrecked. If you come out of Dover with a win, you truly have earned it.”
You have a Miles the Monster trophy. Where does it rank in terms of the trophies you’ve earned?
“The Dover trophy and win are near the top. The first race of the weekend on Saturday was not an easy one for us. We were so fast and we didn’t have the result to go with it. I think there was a little more determination when we got there on Sunday to redeem ourselves and, like I said, you aren’t just getting handed a trophy at Dover. The whole team put in a lot of effort to get us to victory lane that day. We had a lot of big wins in 2020, but that one ranks pretty high on the list.”
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