Chase Briscoe is arguably the driver that most didn’t expect to be here in this position of the season and having a shot at a championship still. Names like Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Larson, Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski have long been eliminated. Briscoe is still marching on as one of eight drivers still left with championship aspirations.
Even among the eight, he’s not the likely pick to become one of four in Phoenix. However, Sunday’s race in Vegas showed that we can’t overlook the Stewart-Haas Racing driver. The day started off like a lot of others have for him, struggling.
“At the beginning of the race, I definitely didn’t think we were going to be able to be in contention,” Briscoe admitted. “I honestly thought we had a motor laying down. We were so slow in the corner. Johnny did a really good job getting the car driving better as he always does.”
Then with Christopher Bell being collected in that Larson and Bubba Wallace run-in, Ryan Blaney getting into the wall and Chase Elliott and his teammate William Byron largely struggling, there Briscoe was in the end with a chance.
“We put ourselves in position and I wish that when I was running second and Justin (Haley) was in the lead, that run would have gone to the end,” Briscoe continued. “I feel like I was probably going to get by him in the next five laps. We had such a big gap compared to everyone else. Nobody else had tires. We were all on equal tires.
“On that last restart, I just didn’t get the job done. (Haley) stalled me out and let Ross put us three wide which put me in a really bad spot into three. When you give up the lead you are kind of just stuck. Who knows? Those guys were coming on tires and I doubt I would have been able to hold them off, but I would have felt better about it if I had the opportunity. We kept ourselves in the ballgame and still have a lot of work to do but we still have a chance. We are running the best we have all year long and that is about all you can ask for.”
He sure is too. After ending the regular season with 1 top 10 (4th in the Coca-Cola 600) in the final 18 races, then only having finishes of 27th, 13th and 14th respectively in the first round, he still found himself in the Round of 8.
He was 5th, 10th and 9th in those races for the best three week stretch that he’s had this season. Briscoe followed that up with being 4th in Vegas which has him just 9 points below the cutline entering Sunday’s Dixie Vodka 400 (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN) at the Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The good news for him, because the South Florida race track is his favorite stop we go to all year.
It’s the spot to where he got his first Truck Series win at in 2017. He was 13th a year later in the Xfinity Series, 3rd in 2019, but won a day after finishing 7th there in 2020.
He absolutely can sneak in a win on Sunday. Even a top 10 does wonders as he can realistically head to Martinsville at or above the cutline.
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