FORT WORTH, TX. – Chase Briscoe comes into Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth fresh off a 10th-place drive last Sunday at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.
Steady performances like that have allowed the driver of the No. 14 Rush Truck Centers/Cummins Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Stewart-Haas Racing to rise from 22nd in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings to his current position of 16th.
While Briscoe certainly wants more, being among the top 16 drivers in points is still an important benchmark. Following the 26th race of the year, only the top 16 drivers are eligible to compete in the 10-race chase for the championship. While that top-16 cutoff is still 18 races away, it remains top of mind for all drivers hovering in and around the top-16. Another strong performance in Sunday’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 at Texas can bolster Briscoe’s standing.
Despite only having three NASCAR Cup Series starts in Texas, Briscoe’s standing at the 1.5-mile oval is solid. He finished 15th in his Cup Series debut at the track in 2021 and then knocked down back-to-back top-10s in his two subsequent races at Texas, finishing fifth in 2022 and 10th last year.
Before racing in the NASCAR Cup Series in Texas, Briscoe made five NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at the track. His best performance was a second-place effort in 2020 when he finished runner-up to fellow Ford pilot Austin Cindric.
Briscoe’s steadiness at Texas began in 2017. In two NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series starts in the Lone Star State, Briscoe finished second in his Truck Series debut at the track in June, leading twice for six laps before Christopher Bell took the top spot for the final two laps. Briscoe then returned to the D-shaped oval in November and finished fourth.
“Restarts at Texas is a little hairy,” said Chase Briscoe. “The speeds are way, way higher, and the risk versus reward is way higher. At Texas, I feel like you sometimes put yourself in a worse spot, and the car doesn’t want to do certain things. Texas has different lanes, so you can move around, making things hairier.”
The risk-versus-reward factor is higher in Texas because the speeds are much higher.
“Texas is a really weird racetrack because in turns one and two, it’s still really fast, but it’s slow compared to what (turns) three and four are. You go to turns three and four, it literally feels like terminal velocity,” added Briscoe. “It feels like the car cannot go any faster. It’s like you’re strapped to a rocket. It’s wild how it feels inside the racecar in three and four. It’s one where you’re hanging on and hoping you get through to the other side. It’s a very, very fast racetrack. It’s changed a lot just over the last two or three years as it’s kind of started to age, already. Texas is wild just because of how fast it is on one side and how slow it feels on the other.”
“I’m good on the horsepower at Texas, but tire fall-off would be nice,’ added Briscoe. “That’s one of the hardest places to pass and it’s just because we’re always running the same speed and the tires don’t really fall off at all, so it would be really cool to see a lot of tire fall-off at a place like Texas just because then it would make it easier to come through the field and things like that. You’d have a lot more comers and goers.”
In ten overall starts at Texas across the NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series, and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, Briscoe has five top-fives and only two finishes outside of the top-15.
“It’s weird because it’s not my favorite racetrack, by any means, but I’ve always statistically run really well there,” said Briscoe. I don’t know what it is about Texas. I think maybe some of it is that it’s two different ends, so your car’s never really going to drive great, and nobody’s car is going to drive perfectly. I feel like you can manipulate your car to do certain things there, which reminds me a little bit more of my background in dirt racing. I don’t know what it is about that place, I really don’t because it has been pretty good to me. I’ve never won there, but I feel like I’ve done everything but win there. Hopefully, we can finally win there, and it would be cool to bring home a cowboy hat from Texas.”
Typically, the places I run well at are the places I really like going to, so it’s probably the one outlier of the racetracks we have where I don’t look forward to going there,’ added Briscoe. “It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just not one of my favorite racetracks, but it’s one where it seems like every time I go there, I’m at least in the mix and kind of battling up front. Maybe I should start liking it a little bit more. It is weird how that works out because typically at places where you run well, you always like them, and that place, I don’t really feel like it fits my driving style, but for whatever reason, it does.”
Getting top-fives and top-10s at Texas is obviously a good thing, but winning at Texas means getting everything right for all 267 laps.
“I’d say Texas is easily one of the top five on our whole schedule where you have to be absolutely perfect all day long because passing is at such a premium and track position is more important there than anywhere else,” said Briscoe. “I would say, statistically, it probably has the least amount of passes. That just means you can’t make a single mistake all day long. You have to be perfect on pit road, you have to be perfect on restarts, and your car has to be really, really good there. And then even from a manufacturer’s side, your motors have to be really good, your aerodynamics, there’s just a lot that goes into winning at Texas and that kind of gets overlooked, when you think about it. Texas is a place you have to be perfect for 267 laps, and if you make a mistake, it’s hard to dig out from it.”
In addition to turning laps on Texas’ 1.5-mile oval in his No. 14 Rush Truck Centers/Cummins Ford Mustang Dark Horse, Briscoe will return to his roots and sling some dirt in his sprint car on Friday night at Texarkana 67 Speedway in Arkansas and again on Saturday night at The Dirt Track at Texas Motor Speedway. Both races will be run under the banner of High Limit Racing, the 410 winged sprint car series owned by NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson and five-time World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series champion Brad Sweet. Briscoe will race his No. 5 Mahindra Tractors machine with his father, Kevin Briscoe, as crew chief. Kevin Briscoe raced sprint cars for over 20 years and won over 150 feature events, claiming track championships at Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Indiana, and winning five track titles at Bloomington (Ind.) Speedway, including a streak of three straight. For those in Texas during the NASCAR race weekend, The Dirt Track is easily accessible, with the .4-mile clay oval located between Interstate 35W and the backstretch of Texas’ 1.5-mile oval.
The 2024 season marks the 15th year of partnership between Rush Truck Centers and Stewart-Haas Racing, and it’s a partnership that goes well beyond a design on a racecar. All Stewart-Haas racecars are transported via tractor-trailers from Rush Truck Centers, the premier service solutions provider to the commercial vehicle industry. Those tractor-trailers are supported by the RushCare Customer Support team of parts and service experts, who also provide concierge-level service for scheduling maintenance, technical support, mobile service dispatch, and roadside assistance, along with help locating the nearest Rush Truck Centers dealer, and more. Rush Truck Centers is the largest network of commercial vehicle dealerships in North America, with 150 locations in the United States and Ontario, Canada, and takes pride in its integrated approach to customer needs – from vehicle sales to aftermarket parts, service, and body shop operations, plus financing, insurance, leasing, and rental, as well as alternate fuel systems and other vehicle technologies.
Cummins joins Rush Truck Centers for this weekend’s race in Texas. Cummins Inc. is a global power technology leader that designs, manufactures, distributes, and services a broad portfolio of power solutions. These solutions include advanced diesel, natural gas, hybrid, electric, fuel cell, and other technologies. Cummins powers the future through innovations that make people’s lives better. Cummins is doing it with the cleanest solutions available, from buses that transport kids to and from school to the trucks that carry essentials to construction, mining equipment, trains and ships, and critical backup power for places like data centers and hospitals. Learn more at cummins.com.
