TALLADEGA, AL – Back-to-back top-10 finishes have vaulted Chase Briscoe from 18th in the NASCAR Cup Series championship point standings to 12th heading into the GEICO 500 Sunday at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
Talladega marks Chase Briscoe’s 10th race and the most-tenured Stewart-Haas driver.
Honestly, it’s probably been my favorite year at Stewart-Haas. All of my teammates are relatively the same age as me. We’re all the same where we’re at career-wise, and it’s just been a lot of fun from the camaraderie side and getting to know them better. I just feel like, from a teamwork standpoint, we’re way better than we’ve ever been working together. I would say ten races in, we’re farther ahead from a teamwork standpoint, so hopefully, we can continue to grow that.”
The six-position gain has come via a 10th-place drive on April 7 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway and a sixth-place run last Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. That sixth-place finish in the Lone Star State was Briscoe’s fourth top-10 of the year and his best result in the nine races this season. The driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Stewart-Haas Racing is eyeing another solid points tally despite Talladega being a track where drivers often end up pointed in the wrong direction.
“The Big One” is as tied to Talladega as “Roll Tide” is to the state of Alabama. The mammoth, 2.66-mile oval puts the nearly 40-car field in a 200 mph freight train that always seems destined for derailment. Briscoe, however, has found a way to stay under the radar and come home with solid results and equally solid points hauls. In six career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Talladega, Briscoe has only one finish outside the top-15. His average finish of 14.8 is fourth-best among full-time Cup Series drivers, trailing only Chase Elliott (13.6), Todd Gilliland (14.0) and Ryan Blaney (14.5). Briscoe’s best Talladega finish is fourth, earned in last year’s GEICO 500.
With six career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Talladega, only one finished outside the top 15. That’s some good, solid consistency at a track where drivers can all too often leave the race early with their car on a hook.
There’s nothing I do there that I feel is unique,” added Briscoe. It’s just one of those things where luck’s on your side, or the man upstairs is looking out for you. We’ve been fortunate to miss the wrecks there and have good days. Hopefully, with where we’re at from a points standpoint – we’re literally back and forth on this cutline throughout the season, and Talladega is one of those places where you can lose a lot of points really quickly. Hopefully, we can have one of those solid days. We’re going there to win the race, but Talladega is one of those places where if you can just come out of it with a top-15, you’re almost happy just because you didn’t bleed a ton of points.”
Fourth was also Briscoe’s best result in four career NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at Talladega. In April 2019, Briscoe finished fourth after leading nine laps. It was his only top-10 finish at Talladega in the Xfinity Series. His other three starts delivered unspectacular yet safe results. All were among the top 20, giving Briscoe an average finish of 14.3 in his Xfinity Series career at Talladega.
Briscoe’s lone NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start at Talladega in October 2017. He qualified a strong fifth but finished 22nd.
Briscoe first saw Talladega in April 2016 when he debuted at the ARCA Menards Series track. Briscoe qualified a distant 20th but finished the 74-lap race in third. It was the first of nine top-three finishes Briscoe earned that year on his way to winning the ARCA title by a staggering 535 points.
“Talladega is such an even playing field for everybody – very similar to Daytona – where at Atlanta, the balance of your car comes into play,” added Briscoe. “But just from the standpoint of being comfortable making moves and being aggressive, for whatever reason, at Atlanta, the moves just felt like slow motion to me, like everything had slowed down. I’ve never had that happen before, so I hope it’ll be the same at Talladega, where everything feels slower, and my mind can process things a little easier.”
For the longest time, Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway was the track most likened to Talladega. While slightly shorter than Talladega, the 2.5-mile oval displayed the same characteristics – pack-style racing and calamitous wrecks. But in 2022, Atlanta Motor Speedway entered the chat thanks to a reconfiguration that turned the 1.54-mile oval into a much tighter version of Daytona and Talladega. Drafting and pack racing are now the name of the game at Atlanta, and when the series raced there nearly two months ago, Briscoe found his groove, juking and jiving to the front, where he challenged for the lead before getting collected in a late-race accident. Said Briscoe about that Atlanta race on Feb. 25.
“We were able to be up front all day and be super aggressive making moves,” said Briscoe. “I thought we were going to be in a perfect spot there, but that’s part of it when you’re racing that tight, and everybody is going for it at the end. We were just on the unfortunate side of it today. (The racing) was fun. That was the most fun I’ve ever had here, and I think some of that is just because our guys did a really good job of bringing a car that we could be aggressive with and make moves. I’m actually looking forward to coming back here. That was a lot of fun. Guys were just making huge moves and big runs, but we could not get close to crashing a lot of times like we would at Daytona or Talladega.”
Mahindra Ag North America is in its third year as the anchor sponsor for Briscoe and the No. 14 team after extending its partnership with Stewart-Haas during the offseason. The multi-year agreement with the NASCAR team co-owned by NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart and industrialist Gene Haas continues to feature Mahindra Tractors, a brand of Mahindra Ag North America, on Briscoe’s No. 14 Ford Mustang for the majority of the NASCAR Cup Series schedule. Houston-based Mahindra Ag North America is part of Mahindra Group’s Automotive and Farm Sector, the world’s No. 1 selling farm tractor company, based on volumes across all company brands. Mahindra offers a range of tractor models from 20-75 horsepower, implements, and the ROXOR heavy-duty UTV. Mahindra farm equipment is engineered to be easy to operate by first-time tractors or side-by-side owners and heavy duty to tackle the tough jobs of rural living, farming, and ranching. Steel-framed Mahindra Tractors and side-by-sides are ideal for customers who demand performance, reliability, and comfort. Mahindra dealers are independent, family-owned businesses located throughout the U.S. and Canada.
