MADISON, IL. – Chase Briscoe will carry the Ford Performance Racing School colors for the first of two consecutive races Sunday at Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis.
“For our team this year, it’s been really just a unique season where we are either hot or completely cold.,” said Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Ford Performance Racing School Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing. “We’re either top-five, or we’re struggling to run 25th. So there have been a lot of character-building days where we’ve just had to not give up. It’s really easy when you’re struggling like that, to start pointing fingers and lose confidence and, for us, we’ve just had to stay really rooted within ourselves to know that we’re capable of doing better. We know that when we put everything together, we’re battling for wins, but we haven’t been able to do it on a consistent basis. So, it’s been a challenging year from the team side of things for us. But I still think we all believe in each other and have each other’s backs. It’s just a matter of trying to be a little more consistent. Once we figure that out, we definitely have the speed and we’ll be able to put all the pieces together.”
Ford Performance Racing School is the only school to wear the Ford Oval, and Ford is the only full-line vehicle manufacturer to offer product-focused experiential driving programs exclusively to the owners of its complete line of performance vehicles, from cars to trucks to SUVs.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver has made two starts at Gateway – one each in the Cup Series and Truck Series – and started both from the pole. He earned his career first Cup Series pole last year on the 1.25-mile, egg-shaped oval, and led the first 27 laps of the Enjoy Illinois 300 before a flat left-rear tire sent him to the pits for an unscheduled stop.
In his 2017 Truck Series outing at the track, Briscoe led twice for a race-high 88 of 160 laps and finished in the runner-up position. It was his fourth top-five in the first eight races that season. Briscoe went on to win the final race of the year at Homestead-Miami Speedway and emerged with Rookie of the Year honors and the Most Popular Driver award.
With 14 of 36 races complete, Briscoe is currently 17th in the driver standings, only four points below the playoff cutline.
“I think this is a weekend where we can put the pieces together to find that consistency through a race and get a good result,” added Briscoe. “The shorter tracks are places where we can go in, lead a lot of laps and get a lot of stage points, and hopefully win the race. We’re kind of right on that cutline for the playoffs, so winning a race would make life way easier, and this weekend is a great opportunity for us to do that. Last year, we were able to sit on the pole and lead laps before the blown tire, so we know that we have a car and setup that’s capable, it’s just a matter of applying the differences to what this year brings.”
