CHARLOTTE, NC. – Five races remain on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule and Sunday’s race on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval serves as the final road-course event of the season.
The race is at 2 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 8.
For Chase Briscoe and the No. 14 Ford Performance Racing School team, it’s a return to the track where Briscoe and crew chief Richard Boswell earned their first win in 2018.
Briscoe took home the trophy in the inaugural NASCAR Xfinity Series race on the Roval in 2018 with Boswell atop the pit box. In just their fourth race together, the No. 98 team started ninth, and Briscoe took the lead for the first time on lap 18 and led until lap 26. He regained the top spot on lap 32 and stayed out front for the final 24 circuits en route to his first of 11 career Xfinity Series wins. The victory led to a full-time ride in SHR’s No. 98 for 2019, and he returned to the Roval that year to secure a ninth-place finish after leading a race-high 21 laps.
There’s been such a change in the complexion of road-course races since the introduction of the NextGen car?
“The biggest change is the brakes. Everyone has these massive brakes that make it a lot easier for guys who maybe don’t have as much experience road-course racing to drive a little harder into a corner and still be able to make it. It narrows that window you have to find places to make up ground throughout the course. It used to be you would know there was a certain corner where you could outbrake someone and gain a spot or two, or put a gap on the guys behind you, but that doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s now a very level playing field when we get to the road courses.”
The Bank of America Roval 400 marks Briscoe’s third Cup Series start on the 2.28-mile, 17-turn road course. In last year’s event, which was the final race in the Round of 12 of the NASCAR Playoffs, Briscoe started 17th and finished ninth to advance to the Round of 8. The top-10 finish was Briscoe’s best on a road course since the introduction of the NextGen car at the outset of the 2022 season, and he bettered it this year with a finish of sixth on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
Over the last month or so, there’s been a little more consistency for the No. 14 team when it comes to results. Do you feel things are starting to turn around for the team?
“Yeah, I think we’re finally starting to get things figured out. Not just the No. 14 team, but Stewart-Haas Racing as a whole. You know, we had a good run of top-five finishes early this season and then we went months without a top-10. It was tough. I’ve never had a season where it was either we finished upfront or we were 33rd. When we made the crew chief change, obviously there were a lot of people wondering why we did it in the middle of the season, but I think it has worked out really well. We’re getting a chance to show that we are capable and we can run up front, and Richard (Boswell) is still in the middle of trying to figure out this car. So, I think that shows there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s putting us in a good starting place for 2024.”
Ford Performance Racing School reunites with Briscoe at the track that serves as its home base. 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.
