HOMESTEAD, FL. – Chase Briscoe, the driver of the No. 14 Magical Vacation Planner (MVP) Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), earned his fourth straight top-10 finish last Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The 400-mile event kicked off the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Playoffs, the final, three-race round before the Championship 4 field is set. Briscoe qualified 16th and was battling for the lead during the final 23 laps before taking the checkered flag fourth.
Since advancing into the Round of 12 following the Sept. 17 race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, Briscoe has been on a tear, finishing fifth on Sept. 25 at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, and 10th at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway on Oct. 2, and ninth on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval on Oct. 9 before Sunday’s fourth-place run at Las Vegas.
He heads to Sunday’s Dixie Vodka 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway sixth in the playoff standings, nine points below the top-four cutoff.
“Homestead is a place I definitely know how to get around, but I feel like we’re going to have to be better,” Briscoe said. “I don’t think we expected the tires to get so worn out at Las Vegas and to be slipping and sliding around as much as we were. It gets a little concerning because Las Vegas has way more grip than Homestead does, so we’ll have to work on some things, but I think there’s a lot we’ve probably learned from last weekend that we can apply. We were really good at the test a few weeks ago at Homestead. I was happy with what we learned, so we’ve just got to go down there and see where we stack up. The thing about testing is you can be really good but show up for the race and nothing works the way you planned. So, hopefully, we’ll be good this weekend and can have a car that we can really race with and come out in a good place in points.”
There’s only one track on the NASCAR schedule where Briscoe has visited victory lane in both a truck and a car – the 1.5-mile Homestead oval. In 2017, when he was driving full-time for Brad Keselowski Racing in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Briscoe arrived for that year’s finale at Homestead searching for a ride in 2018 as the team would be shutting its doors at season’s end. He finished 2017 on a high note at Homestead, leading four times for a race-high 81 laps en route to his first win in a NASCAR national series. The win elevated him to sixth in the Truck Series championship standings and earn him Rookie of the Year honors to go with his series Most Popular Driver award.
The 25-year-old from Mitchell, Indiana, moved on to the Xfinity Series in a part-time capacity in 2018 before joining SHR full-time in 2019. He totaled 11 victories in SHR’s No. 98 Ford Mustang in 2019 and 2020, and Homestead was the setting for one of his more remarkable weekends during the latter season. It was a Saturday-Sunday doubleheader in June, and he overcame a mountain of adversity in the Saturday race to score a solid seventh-place finish.
He drove from nearly last in the 37-car field, having been forced to the pits before the green flag even waved for the 167-lap race after a piece of equipment fell off his racecar during the pace laps. It put Briscoe five laps down to start the event, but he drove through the field twice in the first 70 laps and used pit strategy to get back onto the lead lap for the seventh-place finish. When the No. 98 team returned to close out the doubleheader Sunday, Briscoe outdueled Brandon Jones in a two-lap dash to the finish to earn his third Xfinity Series win of 2020 by just .072 of a second.
“You still can’t have a bad weekend. I mean, you look at Las Vegas and we were awful to start the race, didn’t earn any stage points, and then come back to fight for the win and finish fourth,” Briscoe added. “But, we’re still nine points out. Every point matters. We can’t afford to not have those points. It helps to know we ran well at Martinsville, but that’s a track with a lot of chaos, so you don’t want to put all your hope on that track where you ran well six or seven months ago. We’ve really got to go race by race and make the best out of what we’ve got each week.”
Magical Vacation Planner returns to the No. 14 Ford Mustang for its final race with Briscoe this season. MVP 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 rooms or vacation packages while also scouring existing reservations for price drops to where it 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.
● To celebrate Briscoe’s fans and expand on MVP’s mission of helping others experience the magic and create lifelong memories, MVP is giving three lucky fans the opportunity to win a Walt Disney World ® Vacation Package. Fans can enter for a four-day, three-night Walt Disney World ® Vacation Package for up to four guests by visiting MagicalVacationPlanner.com/ChaseBriscoe.
