● The YellaWood 500 Sunday at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway marks the fifth race in the 10-race NASCAR Playoffs and just two races remain before the 12 current playoff drivers are whittled down to eight. Chase Briscoe earned his way into the Round of 12 by scoring back-to-back top-10 finishes – sixth Sept. 15 at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International and eighth Sept. 21 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway – to offset his last-place finish in the playoff opener Sept. 8 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Those two performances put Briscoe into the Round of 12 with an 11-point cushion. Now, a sense of déjà vu pervades Briscoe and the No. 14 Rush Truck Centers team of Stewart-Haas Racing as they enter Talladega. After a 24th-place finish last Sunday at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Briscoe is 25 points below the top-eight cutline to advance to the next playoff round. While not necessarily in a must-win situation like he was five weeks ago in the regular-season finale at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway where Briscoe won the Cook Out Southern 500 to catapult himself into the 16-driver playoffs, Briscoe will need all 188 laps of the YellaWood 500 to maximize stage points and outrun his playoff brethren.
● “The Big One” is as tied to Talladega as “Roll Tide” is to the state of Alabama. The mammoth, 2.66-mile oval puts the nearly 40-car field in a 200 mph freight train that always seems destined for derailment. Briscoe, however, has found a way to stay under the radar and come home with solid results and equally solid points hauls. In seven career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Talladega, Briscoe has only one finish outside the top-15. His average finish of 14.4 is third-best among fulltime Cup Series drivers, trailing only Todd Gilliland (12.8) and Chase Elliott (13.7). Briscoe’s best Talladega finish is fourth, earned in April 2023.
● Fourth was also Briscoe’s best result in four career NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at Talladega. In April 2019, Briscoe finished fourth after leading nine laps. It was his only top-10 at Talladega in the Xfinity Series. His other three starts delivered unspectacular, yet safe, results. All were among the top-20, giving Briscoe an average finish of 14.3 in his Xfinity Series career at Talladega.
● Briscoe’s lone NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start at Talladega came in October 2017. He qualified a strong fifth but finished 22nd.
● Briscoe first saw Talladega in April 2016 when he made his debut at the track in the ARCA Menards Series. Briscoe qualified a distant 20th but finished the 74-lap race in third. It was the first of nine top-three finishes Briscoe earned that year on his way to winning the ARCA title by a staggering 535 points.
● At Talladega in October 2018, Stewart-Haas enjoyed one of its most dominant days ever. The team qualified 1-2-3-4 for the first time in its history. Stewart-Haas drivers then led 155 of the race’s 193 laps (80.3 percent), including the last lap by Aric Almirola, who delivered Stewart-Haas’ milestone 50th points-paying NASCAR Cup Series victory and the organization’s 11th win of the season.
● The 2024 season marks the 15th year of partnership between Rush Truck Centers and Stewart-Haas Racing, and the paint scheme on Briscoe’s No. 14 Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang Dark Horse this weekend at Talladega is a throwback to the first primary paint scheme the company had with Stewart-Haas driver/owner Tony Stewart in 2013. It’s a partnership that goes well beyond a design on a racecar. All Stewart-Haas racecars are transported via tractor-trailers from Rush Truck Centers, the premier service solutions provider to the commercial vehicle industry. And those tractor-trailers are supported by the RushCare Customer Support team of parts and service experts, who also provide concierge-level service for scheduling maintenance, technical support, mobile service dispatch and roadside assistance, along with help locating the nearest Rush Truck Centers dealer, and more. Rush Truck Centers is the largest network of commercial vehicle dealerships in North America with 150 locations in the United States and Ontario, Canada, and takes pride in its integrated approach to customer needs – from vehicle sales to aftermarket parts, service and body shop operations, plus financing, insurance, leasing and rental, as well as alternate fuel systems and other vehicle technologies.
Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Seven career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Talladega and only one finish outside of the top-15. That’s some good, solid consistency at a track where all too often you can leave the race early with your car on a hook. What’s allowed you to be so consistent at Talladega?
“I have no idea. There’s nothing I really do there that I feel is special. It’s just one of those things where luck’s on your side or the man upstairs is looking out for you. We’ve been just fortunate to miss the wrecks there and have good days. Hopefully, we can just have one of those solid days. Obviously, we’re going there to win the race, but Talladega is one of those places where if you can just come out of it with a top-15, you’re almost happy just because you didn’t bleed a ton of points.”
Do you go into Talladega dreading it because there are so many variables outside of your control, or do you go in with the mindset of it being a race where there’s a real opportunity to win and advance?
“I think you have to have a short memory. I’ve gone through different kinds of spectrums of superspeedway racing. I’ve taken the conservative route and I’ve gone the super-aggressive route. And every time I’ve gone the conservative route, I typically end up crashed. So I’m just going to go back to being on the aggressive side. It’s a little tougher with this NextGen car just because you can’t take runs and do things like you typically would. You’re going to have to try to be up in the mix for stage points and try and just finish the best you can. And if you get caught up in a crash, you get caught up in a crash. But we’ve seen it, you know? I’ve seen it myself when I’m trying to be conservative and things just don’t go well. You normally end up getting caught up in the crash anyway. Look at Denny (Hamlin) at Atlanta, same thing. So I’m just going to go with the mindset of being aggressive and trying to lead every lap and trying to make every move I can and, hopefully, stay out of the chaos.”
Tenth in the Daytona 500, 12th at Talladega in April, and then 14th in your return to Daytona in August. How would you assess your performances at superspeedway races this year?
“I feel like it’s hard to even look at the old stats and say you’ve finished this many times in the top-10 at Talladega or Daytona just because it’s so circumstantial. There are so many things that can happen at those racetracks. Our speed’s been pretty good in qualifying at those types of racetracks. We typically start up front. Our balance hasn’t been bad, either. It just seems like we haven’t been able to quite put it all together on a superspeedway. Hopefully, this time around Talladega will be a little different.”
What’s been the secret to your performance this year at Daytona and Talladega?
“It’s not really any secret, it’s just kind of how luck goes sometimes and just being at the right place at the right time. Even Talladega, we were able to finish well, but I was sideways and backwards across the line. There are a lot of variables that go into it. I just strive to, honestly, use my gut. At times it’s steered me wrong, but more often than not it’s put me in the right situation in just trying to understand when the wrecks are coming and things like that. Just need to go there and do the same stuff I typically do and not try to do anything too fancy and see if it’s good enough.”
These superspeedway races have become fuel-mileage races where you’re riding around until you get to your fuel window, and only then can you finally hit the go switch. Explain what you have to do, and are you handcuffed a little bit until you get into that window where you can go full throttle?
“Superspeedway racing has changed because of the package and the cars. It’s not like you can just go from the back to the front, like you can just knife through the field. It really is gridlocked. It’s just wherever you are in line is where you just kind of are at, like there’s nothing you can do to change that. So with that, everybody kind of learned, ‘Hey, we can’t pass, so we’ll save as much fuel as we can and hope you come off pit road in the lead of that line.’ And then if you do that, you’re going to be in a really good position to win the race. So, that’s why you see everybody save fuel. They just want to take the least amount of time on pit road so they can leapfrog everybody and be the leader of the pack. That’s what’s kind of really changed superspeedway racing. With this NextGen era, it’s just so much harder to drive through the field.”
It’s the fourth and final superspeedway race of the year. Have you found some go-to guys in the draft who you work well with, and do you seek them out to develop your own strategy for the race?
“It’s certainly more dictated by OEMs than it probably ever has been before, but it’s hard in this style of NextGen racing. It’s not like the old car where you could just go from the back to the front and you could pair up with somebody and really work through the field. This car, it’s almost like gridlock. Whoever gets to the front just kind of stays at the front, and if you’re second, third, fourth in line, you’re just kind of stuck second, third or fourth in line. So you really just don’t even worry about who you’re around. You’re just trying to get to lead that line. It’s just a completely different style of racing than we’ve ever had before and it’s been an adjustment for everybody.”
Explain how Ford gets all its drivers together in a superspeedway race.
“The Fords probably work together better than any other manufacturer and it’s because of that open line of communication. We always have a plan and we understand that we’re going to work together. And I don’t know if the other manufacturers do it, but Ford has always done a really good job of getting all the drivers together outside the racetrack. We go do team events and driver-only events where all of us are together and it’s a One Ford family. And during the playoffs, you see the Fords outside of the playoffs make sure they’re doing everything they can to make sure the Fords that are in the playoffs have the best opportunity. That makes being in a Ford nice.”
It seems like there’s always a plan to start the race, and oftentimes it’s driven by the manufacturers. But when the race is underway and variables pop up and split-second decisions need to be made, how are you able to stick to that plan?
“You stick to the plan because Talladega is one of those places where if you get off the plan, it kind of just ruins your day. Like, you can pit by yourself, but then you’re just hung out to dry. You have to have a plan, but I also I feel like that plan never plays out. You’re constantly calling audibles the whole race because it’s constantly changing. One lap, you might be running 10th, and then you get shuffled and you’re running 28th, and now your plan’s completely different than it was two laps ago. So, you’re constantly calling audibles there. It’s one of those races where the crew chief is super important, and just our communication from an IT standpoint is extremely important when we go to places like that. There are just a lot of variables that go into Talladega.”
What’s the patience level of drivers in the last superspeedway race of the year?
“It definitely kind of goes in waves. You start the year at the Daytona 500 and the intensity is really, really high. Then you go to Talladega in the spring and that’s probably the lowest-intensity race we have, as far as superspeedways go. Daytona at the end of the regular season is always really high, but then the playoff race at Talladega is kind of unique in the sense that the first two stages are typically relatively calm, but at the end of the race there’s always chaos. Every superspeedway race we have has a layer of chaos, but you throw in the playoffs and what’s on the line for a lot of guys and it just seems to heighten all that up.”
On the last lap of a race at Talladega, how smart do you need to be and how lucky do you need to be, as it seems that last 2.66 miles is the most treacherous part of the race?
“You’ve got to be aggressive, but you’ve kind of got to shut off that part of your brain that’s telling you, ‘I don’t want to be in this position, I don’t want to be doing this.’ You’ve just got to keep the pedal down to the floor and try to make the moves that’ll put you in the best position. The hair on the back of your neck is always standing up within the last five laps of the race at Talladega or Daytona because you just know what’s coming and you just hope you’re not on the bad side of it. You kind of know what you’re going to get yourself into when you get there and you hope you end up on the good side of it.”
How do you balance self-preservation with being where you need to be at the end of the race to win?
“It’s all situational depending on your points situation that day. It dictates how aggressive you have to be. If you’re 40 points up, if you’re 20 points out, if you’re in a must-win situation, that kind of changes. I feel like how you approach that style of race, and even how you do the end of the race, if you’re 25 points above the cutline, you’re going to be a little more timid and just make sure you stay above that cutline. But if you’re 10 points below or in a must-win, you’re probably a little more aggressive. Obviously, if you’re a non-playoff guy, you just kind of go for the win and whatever happens, happens. But for the playoff guys, I feel like it’s certainly a little more situational.”
Does blocking remain the necessary evil it’s seemingly always been when it comes to superspeedway racing?
“Yeah, that’s just kind of the name of the game now. Everybody kind of blocks. It’s just what you’ve got to do if you want to run up front and win the race. People are going to do it, but whether it’s lap one or the last lap changes the severity of the block. I mean, guys are going to block really from the get-go. The guy getting blocked is going to be less and less lenient of the guy doing the blocking, and that’s when you normally see the chaos start. It’s going to be a lot of blocking, a lot of pushing, and that’s the way it is whenever you go to Daytona and Talladega.”
What’s the atmosphere like at Talladega?
“It’s probably the most unique one in all of NASCAR. You really just have a party where a race just so happens to be. I mean, they’re there to watch the race, right? But they’re really going there to just hang out, camp out and have a good time. Both of Talladega’s races are at that perfect point of the year for camping, like you have the end of the spring and you have the end of the fall, too. It’s just one of those cool racetracks where everybody’s there to have a good time. If you’re having a bad time at Talladega, I don’t know what to tell you.”
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