● The South Point 400 Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will mark Chase Briscoe’s eighth career NASCAR Cup Series start at the 1.5-mile oval. His best finish is a fourth-place drive in October 2022, but the track has proven to be challenging otherwise with Briscoe scoring just one other top-15 result – 14th in September 2021.
● In the City of Lights, Briscoe was lights out at Las Vegas when it came to the NASCAR Xfinity Series. In five career Xfinity Series starts at Las Vegas, Briscoe won twice and had two other finishes of 11th or better. In fact, Briscoe left Las Vegas in the best way possible. In his final two Xfinity Series starts at the track, he won both times by sweeping the slate of races in 2020, leading 253 of the 400 laps available (63.3 percent).
● In his lone NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start at Las Vegas in September 2017, Briscoe was strong and consistent, qualifying third, leading 40 laps, and then finishing third.
● Texas A&M University has partnered with Briscoe and the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team this weekend at Las Vegas. The collaboration provides a platform for Texas A&M to share its story of nearly 150 years of advancing knowledge and human achievement, preparing students to be lifelong learners and leaders, and its rich military heritage. Las Vegas marks the first of two races where Texas A&M will be featured on cars prepared by Stewart-Haas, as Briscoe’s teammate, NASCAR Cup Series rookie-of-the-year contender Josh Berry, will carry Texas A&M colors on his No. 4 Ford Mustang Dark Horse in the season finale Nov. 10 at Phoenix Raceway with a livery reflective of Texas A&M’s commitment to celebrating and serving our nation’s veterans. Said R. Ethan Braden, vice president, chief marketing and communications officer at Texas A&M, about the partnership: “With millions of engaged fans, this partnership with Stewart-Haas Racing represents a fantastic opportunity to put the Aggie Spirit front and center and further show the nation what Texas A&M University stands for. We look forward to cheering on Chase Briscoe in Aggie Maroon at Las Vegas and Josh Berry at the season finale in Phoenix, where we’ll showcase Texas A&M’s appreciation for our country and our military prior to Veterans Day. Texas A&M has a rich history of leadership and selfless service, and we are committed to serving well those who have served.”
● Texas A&M University is driven by a tradition of excellence and passion to continually improve. It is a destination of choice for those who serve or have served to pursue higher education. The link with NASCAR is an appropriate one as the sanctioning body has long honored its nation’s service members, most notably with its annual NASCAR Salutes program, a tenured initiative featuring important associations with Honor and Remember, which recognizes fallen service members and their families, and Sound Off, a nonprofit organization that works to reduce veteran suicide through free and anonymous mental health for veterans and service members.
● Recently named the top university in Texas and the No. 11 public university in the nation by The Wall Street Journal, Texas A&M’s forward momentum is evidenced by a number of recent recognitions. In a testament to its dedication to academic excellence and innovation, the College of Engineering was named a top-10 public engineering school by U.S. News & World Report, with the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering ranked best in the nation. The college also secured the top spot for engineering research expenditures in fiscal year 2023, with $444.7 million in spending. The Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering – part of both the College of Engineering and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences – is also ranked No. 1 in the nation.
● In addition to providing an exemplary student experience, the university is also educating the next generation of leaders who will put Texas A&M’s Core Values into practice, as reflected by the remarkable number of Aggies leading America’s companies. Texas A&M is tied for No. 1 among the nation’s public universities and No. 5 overall for the number of graduates serving as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies today.
Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Texas A&M University Ford Mustang Dark Horse
You raced at Kansas Speedway three weeks ago and it bears a close resemblance to Las Vegas. Did your run at Kansas provide any insights on what you need to work on for Las Vegas?
“Kansas was probably our worst race and, thankfully, I think Vegas and Kansas are quite a bit different. Vegas is really, really rough, where Kansas is probably the smoothest mile-and-a-half we have. I don’t know if you can really take a whole lot from it, so hopefully nothing really correlates. Maybe we’d learn from what not to do at Kansas that that would apply. But, yeah, I think that they’re pretty different in a lot of ways. They’re obviously the same in length, but their characteristics are quite a bit different.”
Your prior race at Las Vegas took place back in early March. In the seven months that have passed since that race, how has the racing at intermediate tracks evolved?
“I don’t think the style of racing or what you look for or expect is any different. I think all that’s the same, but I definitely think the teams have figured different things out. The manufacturers, you look at the beginning of the year, the Fords were definitely struggling a little bit more, and now I feel like we’re in a much better spot. I feel like we’re just smarter from that standpoint. Everybody’s made their stuff better, so the bar is constantly changing? But I think if you took what you ran there the first race, it’s probably not even going to be close this time around.”
The first Las Vegas race was the first true test of the new Ford Mustang Dark Horse. With almost a full season under your belt with the Dark Horse, have you discovered ways to get the most out of it, or at least more ways than you knew back in March?
“For sure, the beginning of the year we didn’t know what to expect with it. But I think we quickly learned that, from a performance standpoint, it was going to be better. There were a lot of things that were different on it and just the things we had to do to kind of wake it up and things like that were totally different than with the old car. It probably took us all a little bit longer than we would’ve liked to get the Dark Horse going, but I feel like once we all kind of figured it out, we’ve been way closer to where we need to be.”
What do you need to be fast and consistent throughout a race at Las Vegas?
“Obviously, you have to have a good-driving racecar, and typically that means getting through the bumps really good there. You have to have a car that can kind of maneuver around. There are a lot of different grooves you can run at Las Vegas. You have to be able to have good short-run speed because restarts are so important, but then you have to have a car that’ll kind of hang on for the long run. It seems like we always have really long runs there with a lot of green-flag pit stops, so it’s one of those races that kind of just takes a little bit of everything from a car standpoint and an execution standpoint.”
Is Las Vegas also a momentum track?
“It’s definitely high-speed, and I would say it’s a lot less momentum-based than a place like Kansas, but it’s still track where we’re running a 195 miles an hour. So momentum and not losing speed is still a big part of it, but certainly I feel like the mechanical balance at Vegas is always a crucial part of it, just with how rough it is and the things you kind of fight there.”
You enjoyed a fourth-place run at Las Vegas in October of 2022, but it’s been tough sledding there since. What does it take to have a good day at Las Vegas?
“That’s been a place where, in the Xfinity Series, I was able to have pretty good success. And then in the Cup car in 2022 I was able to run pretty good there. So I feel like I know what I need to get around that racetrack and it’s always been a racetrack that I’ve really enjoyed going to and just feel comfortable at. It was definitely a tough road last year. We just couldn’t ever seem to get the balance of the car quite right. Hopefully, this year we can get back to the winning ways we had in Xfinity and the up-front running we had there in 2022, and if we do that, we’ll obviously be in the mix. So, that’s what we’ve got to go there and do. It’s just a matter of putting all of those things together and, hopefully, all of our tools and everything will lead us down the right direction and we can unload really quick and just put our whole weekend together.”
When your car isn’t right, what do you do behind the wheel to get the best finish possible?
“At Vegas, you at least have some options if your car isn’t running good. There are some tracks you go to where it’s really hard to do anything, it’s so one-lane, or one groove is really more dominant than the other. At Vegas, depending on the weather, you can definitely move around and try different things, more so in turns one and two than three and four. In three and four, it seems like the bottom has become the place to be. Vegas is very rough compared to a lot of the tracks we go to, so how you hit the bumps and things like that, you can kind of manipulate your car and manhandle it in certain ways to get it to do what you want it to do, to a certain extent.”
You were lights-out at Las Vegas in the Xfinity Series, winning two races there – swept them in 2020 – and two other finishes of 11th or better. What made those Xfinity Series races so good and productive at Las Vegas?
“Our car was just really good there. I think you’ll continue to see that with Stewart-Haas on the Xfinity side. They’ve always had a really good package at Vegas. Look at Riley (Herbst) getting his first win there last year. Our cars always drove really well there, so it always made my job really easy. It was really good for us to be really good at Vegas, truthfully, in the Xfinity stuff. It always started your season. It was one of the first races, so to be able to go there and win early was always good. And, obviously, it was always in the playoffs where you could set yourself up for a Championship 4 run. For us in 2020, it was important to be good there, just to get ourselves into the playoffs early, but then also to be able to try to go to the Championship 4. It’s the same this year. It has the same amount of significance in the Cup Series. You go there early in the year trying to set the groundwork for the summer, and also you go there in the playoffs to try to set yourself up for a Championship 4 run.”
Talk about the difference between the Xfinity Series and the Cup Series, both in terms of the cars but also in terms of the caliber of talent through the field.
“The cars are definitely different, more so now than ever with the NextGen car. But for sure the biggest thing when it comes to Cup racing and how it differs from Xfinity is the competitive side of things. If you’re driving for one of the top teams in the Xfinity Series, you can have a bad day on pit road or even make mistakes on the racetrack and you’re still going to be able to recover for a top-10 day, or right around there. The number of cars that can win is a lot smaller, where on the Cup side, there are 30 cars that can go win and 20 of those cars are typically pretty close on speed, so you can’t afford to have a little mistake. You’re not going to be able to go to the back of the field and drive back through the field. When you look at the Cup Series, every team is incredibly strong, and then every racecar driver in the field has won at every level that they’ve been at. On the Xfinity side, you don’t have as many guys who are incredible racecar drivers capable of winning any weekend in any series that they go run. I think that’s the one thing that stands out most about the Cup Series – it’s probably the most competitive racing series in the world when it comes to not only the number of teams that can win, but the number of drivers who can win.”
● Event: South Point 400 (Round 33 of 36)
● Time/Date: 2 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 20
● Location: Las Vegas Motor Speedway
● Layout: 1.5-mile oval
● Laps/Miles: 267 laps/400.5 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 80 laps / Stage 2: 85 laps / Final Stage: 102 laps
● TV/Radio: NBC / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
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