AVONDALE, AZ — Chase Briscoe won here in the spring to not only score his first career NASCAR Cup Series victory, but also stamp his name into the playoffs as well. It was the start of a great sophomore season for the Indiana native. To go along with the win was a third-place finish in the season opening Daytona 500. However, his season went downhill from there.

Over the final 22 races of the regular season he had just a pair of Top-10 finishes including one top 5. He was an easy pick to get eliminated in the opening round because of that stat. Even in the first round, his finishes were 27th, 13th and 14th respectively. That was wildly enough, enough to advance him to the next round.

25 races, 1 top 5 finish and 2 top 10’s. The Round of 12 is where his season changed again.

Briscoe finished 5th in the round opener at Texas for the first top five since May 29 at Charlotte. He then backed that up with a 10th place run a week later in Talladega. After that was a ninth place result on the ROVAL to advance him to the Round of 8.

Briscoe started that round off with being 4th in Vegas and closed it out being 9th in Martinsville. But, that 36th place result in Homestead was the reason to which he was bounced. It didn’t stop him from having a great season finale in Phoenix to where he qualified third, was third and fifth in the pair of stages and would finish fourth when it was all said and done.

Briscoe even had a shot to win in the end. He exited pit lane first on the final stop but ultimately couldn’t hold off the Penske duo in the end.

“I just didn’t fire off near as good,” Briscoe said of the final stint. “I was kind of on top of the racetrack a little bit more than I really had been all day. Truthfully, the 22 and the 12 were so good on the short run every time. I just had nothing for them. On the long run, I was typically a little bit better. I just would give up so much on the short run. I just didn’t fire off very good there at the end. I don’t really know why. I don’t know if the track just changed there as the sun was going down. It wasn’t as good. I felt that was the worst run balance-wise we had all day. It’s unfortunate that’s when it came, but, overall, it was a good day.”

Briscoe says that he feels like they’re a top five team now, especially in the playoffs to which he went from 1 top 5 and 2 top 10’s in 25 races to 6 top 10’s and 3 top 5’s in the final 7.

“I definitely feel like we’re a top-five team week in and week out, especially these last 10 weeks. It’s just a matter of putting it all together. This was one of the best races we ran start to finish today, but we just came up a little bit short. We still have to get a little bit better, but we definitely got closer to where we need to be.”

He brought the No. 14 Ford home eighth in owners’ pints while he was 9th in driver points.