DAYTONA – Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 Magical Vacation Planner Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing, heads to Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway for one last shot at making the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
The regular-season finale marks Briscoe’s sixth Cup Series start at Daytona. His best finish of third on the 2.5-mile oval came in the 2022 Daytona 500, the first race for the NextGen racecar.
Last year, headed to the August Daytona race Briscoe had already locked into the playoffs.
Briscoe talks about the difference in preparation for a Daytona race that is your last shot at making this year’s 16-driver playoff lineup.
“It’s a big difference. You go in knowing that you want to do anything you can to put yourself in a position to win and take your team into the playoffs, but there are going to be a lot of other guys with the same plan,” added Briscoe. “You want to win every race, but maybe if we had already done that, we’d go into this one a little more focused on winning a stage, picking up playoff points, or something like that. Daytona is already a tough race to prepare for. Anything can happen and it makes it tough to stick to a specific strategy. We’ve done well there, so I know we are capable, it’s just going to come down to a lot of good luck and no mistakes on our part to even have a shot at being in position at the end. From there, anything can happen.”
The Coke Zero Sugar 400 will be the third superspeedway race of the year. The most recent was four months ago at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, where Briscoe drove to a fourth-place finish. It was his third consecutive top-five finish during a streak that included a fifth-place finish in the dirt race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and a fourth-place result at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.
This year’s first Daytona race didn’t end well after you were caught up in an accident with less than 20 laps to go, but Briscoe recovered well to finish fourth in the next superspeedway race at Talladega.
“We were executing really well at Daytona before that wreck took us out, and then we went to Talladega and were able to stick it out until the end and come out with a good finish,” said Briscoe. “So, that’s why I say I know we are capable. Unfortunately, a lot of what happens will probably be out of our control, but I think we’ll show up with a fast car and we know the Fords usually do really well on the superspeedways.”
Briscoe owns five NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at Daytona with two top-fives earned and a best result of third in the August 2020 race.
He also made one Daytona start each in the NASCAR Truck Series and the ARCA Menards Series. Briscoe finished third in the 2017 Truck Series race and fourth in the 2016 ARCA race.
