DOVER, DEL – Chase Briscoe will race Sunday at the Dover 400. The race will begin at 2 p.m. at the Dover International Speedway.
“Dover is one of my favorite tracks. For whatever reason, I’ve done well there in the past. It’s a high-speed, high-banked concrete track that really tests drivers,” said Briscoe. “The way you have to carry speed into the corner takes a big commitment. If you hesitate at all, you’re losing your position or ending up in a bad situation. Things happen quickly at Dover, but I feel like we’re in a good place and we have some positive momentum we’re riding after Darlington.”
Chase Briscoe and the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team matched their best finish of the 2021 season last weekend at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway. Briscoe rallied after going down a lap early in the event, using pit strategy to place the No. 14 Ford Mustang in the top-10. Despite being on older tires, he maintained his position upfront and was fighting for a top-10 finish in the closing laps and took the checkered flag 11th.
Briscoe knows what it takes to win on a Sunday at Dover. He has done well in the past but the Monster Mile can turn bad in a heartbeat and is physically demanding.
“I would say it’s definitely the track with the most g-force load. Maybe Bristol is a little bit harder on your neck, only because the straightaway is shorter than Dover, so you don’t get as much of a rest,” Briscoe added. “But you feel it in your back more at Dover and it’s hard to get acclimated to the speed. It takes me a run of practice, or in this format, the first run of the race to remind myself to breathe again and let loose on the wheel. I think last year in the Xfinity race we had a competition caution on lap 20 or 25, and I don’t think I breathed those first 25 laps. It is the most physically draining thing I’ve ever done in a stock car. It’s hard to just show up and go. The first part of the race will definitely be challenging until we get used to it again.”
The Ford Performance Racing School driver won the second race in last year’s NASCAR Xfinity Series doubleheader at the concrete mile oval. He started last in the Sunday edition of the Xfinity Series program 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. Briscoe’s primary racecar was deemed to be too damaged after Saturday’s 200-mile race, and his backup Ford machine proved ready for the spotlight, even from the back of the grid. Briscoe wheeled it into the lead for the first time on lap 71 to take the Stage 2 win. It was a prelude of the finish, as Briscoe 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 last year among his three top-five finishes and four top-10s.
Briscoe has also made one NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start at Dover in June 2017. He finished 12th after earning his first career NASCAR pole.
With 12 Cup Series races complete, Briscoe sits 25th in the point standings and leads the Rookie of the Year standings by 73 points over Anthony Alfredo.
“We should’ve had a top-10, but I got into the wall and lost that position. I think the next step is just keeping up the consistency and building on what we did last weekend,” Briscoe said. “We were able to overcome being down a lap early enough that we still had time to try out some strategy and run up front. It’s never bad for a team to have something positive to carry into the next week and I’m getting more comfortable with each race. There is always more that can be done, but getting decent finishes at tracks where I’ve done well in the past certainly helps to show that we’re heading in the right direction. We’re going to get to some places where I haven’t done well or the team has never run, like COTA, and we’ll be back to working off the same page as everyone else. So, to run up front and see where we stack up against other guys right now is going to pay off for us down the road.”
Information True Speed Communication on behalf of Stewart-Haas Racing.
