LAS VEGAS- Chase Briscoe will race on Sunday, October 20, at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The South Point 400 begins at 2:00 p.m.
Briscoe was asked to break down his thoughts before this weekend’s race:
You raced at Kansas Speedway three weeks ago and it bears a close resemblance to Las Vegas. Did your run at Kansas provide any insights on what you need to work on for Las Vegas?
“Kansas was probably our worst race, and thankfully, I think Vegas and Kansas are quite a bit different. Vegas is really, really rough, where Kansas is probably the smoothest mile-and-a-half we have. I don’t know if you can really take a whole lot from it, so hopefully, nothing really correlates. Maybe we’d learn from what not to do at Kansas, and that would apply. But, yeah, I think that they’re pretty different in a lot of ways. They’re obviously the same in length, but their characteristics are quite a bit different.”
Your prior race at Las Vegas took place back in early March. In the seven months that have passed since that race, how has the racing at intermediate tracks evolved?
“I don’t think the style of racing or what you look for or expect is any different. I think all that’s the same, but I definitely think the teams have figured different things out. The manufacturers, you look at the beginning of the year, the Fords were definitely struggling a little bit more, and now I feel like we’re in a much better spot. I feel like we’re just smarter from that standpoint. Everybody’s made their stuff better, so the bar is constantly changing. But I think if you took what you ran there the first race, it’s probably not even going to be close this time around.”
The first Las Vegas race was the first true test of the new Ford Mustang Dark Horse. With almost a full season under your belt with the Dark Horse, have you discovered ways to get the most out of it, or at least more ways than you knew back in March?
“For sure, the beginning of the year, we didn’t know what to expect with it. But I think we quickly learned that, from a performance standpoint, it was going to be better. There were a lot of things that were different on it, and just the things we had to do to kind of wake it up and things like that were totally different than with the old car. It probably took us all a little bit longer than we would’ve liked to get the Dark Horse going, but I feel like once we all kind of figured it out, we’ve been way closer to where we need to be.”
What do you need to be fast and consistent throughout a race at Las Vegas?
“Obviously, you have to have a good-driving racecar, and typically, that means getting through the bumps really good there. You have to have a car that can kind of maneuver around. There are a lot of different grooves you can run at Las Vegas. You have to be able to have good short-run speed because restarts are so important, but then you have to have a car that’ll kind of hang on for the long run. It seems like we always have really long runs there with a lot of green-flag pit stops, so it’s one of those races that kind of just takes a little bit of everything from a car standpoint and an execution standpoint.”
Is Las Vegas also a momentum track?
“It’s definitely high-speed, and I would say it’s a lot less momentum-based than a place like Kansas, but it’s still track where we’re running 195 miles an hour. So momentum and not losing speed is still a big part of it, but certainly, I feel like the mechanical balance at Vegas is always a crucial part of it, just with how rough it is and the things you kind of fight there.”
You enjoyed a fourth-place run at Las Vegas in October of 2022, but it’s been tough sledding there since. What does it take to have a good day at Las Vegas?
“That’s been a place where, in the Xfinity Series, I was able to have pretty good success. And then, in the Cup car in 2022, I was able to run pretty good there. So I feel like I know what I need to get around that racetrack, and it’s always been a racetrack that I’ve really enjoyed going to and just feel comfortable at. It was definitely a tough road last year. We just couldn’t ever seem to get the balance of the car quite right. Hopefully, this year we can get back to the winning ways we had in Xfinity and the up-front running we had there in 2022, and if we do that, we’ll obviously be in the mix. So, that’s what we’ve got to go there and do. It’s just a matter of putting all of those things together, and hopefully, all of our tools and everything will lead us down the right direction and we can unload really quick and just put our whole weekend together.”
When your car isn’t right, what do you do behind the wheel to get the best finish possible?
“At Vegas, you at least have some options if your car isn’t running good. There are some tracks you go to where it’s really hard to do anything; it’s so one lane or one groove is really more dominant than the other. At Vegas, depending on the weather, you can definitely move around and try different things, more so in turns one and two than three and four. In three and four, it seems like the bottom has become the place to be. Vegas is very rough compared to a lot of the tracks we go to, so how you hit the bumps and things like that, you can kind of manipulate your car and manhandle it in certain ways to get it to do what you want it to do, to a certain extent.”
You were lights-out at Las Vegas in the Xfinity Series, winning two races there – swept them in 2020 – and two other finishes of 11th or better. What made those Xfinity Series races so good and productive at Las Vegas?
“Our car was just really good there. I think you’ll continue to see that with Stewart-Haas on the Xfinity side. They’ve always had a really good package at Vegas. Look at Riley (Herbst) getting his first win there last year. Our cars always drove really well there, so it always made my job really easy. It was really good for us to be really good at Vegas, truthfully, in the Xfinity stuff. It always started your season. It was one of the first races, so to be able to go there and win early was always good. And, obviously, it was always in the playoffs where you could set yourself up for a Championship 4 run. For us in 2020, it was important to be good there, just to get ourselves into the playoffs early, but then also to be able to try to go to the Championship 4. It’s the same this year. It has the same amount of significance in the Cup Series. You go there early in the year trying to set the groundwork for the summer, and also, you go there in the playoffs to try to set yourself up for a Championship 4 run.”
Talk about the difference between the Xfinity Series and the Cup Series, both in terms of the cars but also in terms of the caliber of talent through the field.
“The cars are definitely different, more so now than ever with the NextGen car. But for sure, the biggest thing when it comes to Cup racing and how it differs from Xfinity is the competitive side of things. If you’re driving for one of the top teams in the Xfinity Series, you can have a bad day on pit road or even make mistakes on the racetrack, and you’re still going to be able to recover for a top-10 day, or right around there. The number of cars that can win is a lot smaller, where on the Cup side, there are 30 cars that can go win, and 20 of those cars are typically pretty close on speed, so you can’t afford to have a little mistake. You’re not going to be able to go to the back of the field and drive back through the field. When you look at the Cup Series, every team is incredibly strong, and then every racecar driver in the field has won at every level that they’ve been at. On the Xfinity side, you don’t have as many guys who are incredible racecar drivers capable of winning any weekend in any series that they go run. I think that’s the one thing that stands out most about the Cup Series – it’s probably the most competitive racing series in the world when it comes to not only the number of teams that can win but the number of drivers who can win.”
