POCONO, Pa. – Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway will feature double the HighPoint.com branding as Chase Briscoe’s No. 14 Ford Mustang entry regains the familiar blue-and-white scheme for the recently named HighPoint.com 400.
Briscoe is fresh off his fifth top-10 finish of the season earned Monday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. It was his best result since a fourth-place finish in the non-points-paying NASCAR All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway on May 21.
The leading IT infrastructure and solutions company entered a partnership with Pocono to sponsor the 160-lap race this season. The event takes place at the 2.5-mile triangle just 90 minutes west of Sparta, New Jersey, where the company was founded in 1996. HighPoint serves markets in the Tri-State Region and the Southeastern United States, with a presence in Charlotte, North Carolina, and overseas in London and The Netherlands.
In his third Cup Series start at the Tricky Triangle in 2022, Briscoe earned his best finish of 15th and qualified 13th.
Pocono is known for being an extremely finicky track.
“I have always really liked Pocono for whatever reason and it just kind of fits my driving style,” said Chase Briscoe. “I like a challenge and you get that there. Your car is never going to drive perfectly, it’ll likely be bad in one of the corners and you just have to deal with it and work on getting it right in the other two and on straightaways. You have to get used to being really uncomfortable, and you have to adapt and change things as the race goes on. You’re constantly searching, trying to find whatever it is that you need to make your car just a little bit better in one small part of the track. Every little thing is critical as far as getting your timing right, and your momentum right. If you lose time in the wrong area because you’re trying to pass somebody and don’t clear him, you lose a lot more than you would somewhere else.”
Briscoe has visited Pocono’s victory lane twice – once in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and once in the ARCA Menards Series. In 2020, the native of Mitchell, Indiana, overcame a pit-road speeding penalty, a near-miss in a multi-car accident, and a late-race spin while leading to notch his fourth Xfinity Series win of the season and the first home-track win for HighPoint.com. He led 24 laps that day.
Keeping your mindset is key at Pocono.
“I think some guys go in with the mindset or mentality where they’re already kind of defeated before they get there because it’s such a tough track, ” added Briscoe. “That’s half the battle and I’ve always loved racing there. But it is probably one of the most terrifying places we race. The front straightaway is so long, and you can’t see the end of the corner. You’re almost going into this 90-degree corner and, you know, hopefully, you come out OK on the other side. The racing is tough but the track has a great atmosphere with all the fans camping, so if you can go in knowing you have challenges that you just have to manage, the success will come and then you get to go out and celebrate with all of those people that have stuck it out all weekend.”
On July 29, 2016, Briscoe won the ARCA event at Pocono, the last in a series of four consecutive victories that year. He led all but nine of the race’s 60 laps. Following Pocono, he picked up two more victories to take the ARCA championship by an impressive 535 points.
Briscoe finished ninth in his lone NASCAR Truck Series start at Pocono in 2017.
Briscoe is in the position of having to win to make the playoffs, is Pocono a track you look forward to as the regular season winds down?
“We have to win and that does open the door for some strategy,” added Briscoe. “Pocono is a great place for that. You can kind of get off strategy and try some things to get track position and then just keep it upfront. We’ve just got to go there and win, there is no other plan, and we need to do that for HighPoint, as well, to get their car in victory lane for their race. There would be no better outcome but, no matter what, every race is a chance for us to learn. You hope you’re doing that with a win, but we can always find things to take away for improvement.”
