MARTINSVILLE, VA. – With just two races remaining on the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series schedule, Chase Briscoe is looking to find his way back to victory lane where the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors team has been the strongest – the short tracks.
The mission begins this weekend with the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, where Briscoe’s performance has been strong since the introduction of the NextGen car at the start of the 2022 season. A fourth-consecutive top-10 finish at the half-mile oval tucked in the hills of Ridgeway, Virginia, would add to the Stewart-Haas Racing driver’s momentum headed to the final race of the season at Phoenix Raceway, where the 28-year-old driver earned his first victory behind the wheel of the No. 14 Ford Mustang.
Briscoe has earned three straight top-10 finishes at Martinsville dating back to the March 2022 race. He scored ninth-place results in both 2022 events, the second one in the October race, and the third and final race of the Round of 8 of the Cup Series Playoffs in which he was eliminated from championship contention. This past April at Martinsville, Briscoe finished fifth in the first stage and second in the second stage, and led twice for a total of 109 laps en route to a fifth-place result.
In the fall of 2020, when the NASCAR Xfinity Series returned to Martinsville after a 13-year hiatus, Briscoe drove to a seventh-place finish. The 27-year-old racer also owns two NASCAR Truck Series starts at Martinsville. His best result came in April 2017, when he started eighth and finished 11th. He returned that October to start on the pole and lead the first 39 laps before a late-race accident relegated him to a 19th-place finish.
Since the introduction of the NextGen, Briscoe has never finished outside of the top 10 at Martinsville.
“I’ve always enjoyed going to Martinsville,” Briscoe said. “I felt like I’ve always had speed there, I just didn’t really race that well. So, I don’t know if the NextGen just kind of fits me a little bit better there or if it’s the experience. Martinsville has definitely been a place where we’ve been really good every time we’ve been, we just haven’t been able to capitalize on how good we are. We’ve led quite a few laps there but just haven’t been able to put it all together. It’s a place we always look forward to going to because we are always so fast, so hopefully this time will be different.”
There are a lot of guys who grew up racing asphalt Late Models and who had a goal of racing on tracks like Martinsville. As a dirt racer, is a win at Martinsville as coveted to you as it would be to them?
“Martinsville is a very iconic track,” Briscoe added. “The trophy is probably the one that everybody wants. So, from that standpoint, yeah, it definitely is. I feel like if you win at Martinsville, you’re respected as a really good short-track driver and, as a guy who didn’t do any of that growing up, it’d be cool for me to be able to win there. There is a list of guys who are just incredible short-track racers, and that’s not something that I grew up doing, so if I could add my name to that, it would be really cool.”
You didn’t do much Late Model racing growing up, but you did get behind the wheel of a pavement Late Model this year and won in just your second start. Have you learned anything from that limited amount of time on track?
“It’s a completely different kind of racing, but I do feel like I’ve learned some things as far as technique that could really help,” he added. “The reason Denny Hamlin and William Byron are so good at short tracks is because they do have that foundation in late-model racing. It definitely doesn’t hurt to get that experience.”
