• This weekend’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event at Richmond (Va.) Raceway marks the series’ fourth and final doubleheader of the season. Two Xfinity Series races will be held on back-to-back days at the .75-mile oval and each race is 250 laps. Friday’s Go Bowling 250 begins at 7 p.m. EDT and Saturday’s Virginia is for Racing Lovers 250 begins at 2 p.m. NBCSN and SiriusXM will provide live coverage of both races.
• Chase Briscoe’s No. 98 Ford Mustang will feature Go Bowling for the first time in 2020. Go Bowling, the consumer-facing brand of the bowling industry, is utilizing its longstanding partnership with Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) to promote its Go Bowling America league program to consumers across the United States. The Go Bowling America league program focuses on bringing families, young adults and kids alike back to the lanes in a healthy and safe fashion, as centers around the country have implemented strict measures to ensure the wellness of its employees and customers who come to bowl. Go Bowling, in conjunction with its industry partners, has introduced detailed safety protocols to the thousands of U.S. bowling centers that include social distancing recommendations, use of personal protective equipment where required, and guidelines for sanitizing balls and shoes, as well as other equipment in the facility. Additionally, the Go Bowling America league program provides every bowler who joins at a participating bowling center with his or her own, brand-new bowling ball to minimize shared contact.
• Briscoe has finished no worse than 10thduring the three previous Xfinity Series doubleheader events this season and has twice closed out the doubleheader weekend with a win – June 14 at
Homestead-Miami Speedway and Aug. 23 at Dover (Del.) International Speedway. Briscoe’s wins at Homestead and Dover followed tumultuous beginnings for the No. 98 team in each of those doubleheaders. At Homestead, Briscoe started the first race of the series seven laps down after losing equipment on the pace laps of the 147-lap event. He drove from last to a seventh-place finish on Saturday and captured the win on Sunday after a two-lap shootout with Brandon Jones. In the first Xfinity Series event at Dover, Briscoe spun on lap 78 while contending for third place, but bounced back to score a top-10 result. Though the No. 98 team was forced to unload their backup Ford Mustang for Sunday’s race at the Monster Mile, Briscoe once again drove from the back of the field to first, leading three times for a race-high 107 laps to earn his sixth win of the season.
• Briscoe enters Richmond second in the regular-season championship standings, 54 points behind series leader Austin Cindric. However, the 25-year-old racer is already well positioned for the Xfinity Series Playoffs, which starts Sept. 26 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. With three races still remaining in the regular season, Briscoe leads in two important categories – wins (Briscoe has six, next best has five victories) and playoff points (Briscoe has 35, next best has 34). This season will mark Briscoe’s second season of playoff eligibility. He finished fifth in the title race last year, narrowly missing out on advancing to the Championship 4 and competing for the series championship. Nonetheless, the performance earned Briscoe the 2019 rookie-of-the-year title.
• In three career Xfinity Series starts at Richmond, Briscoe has one top-five and two top-10 finishes with a best result of fifth in last year’s Go Bowling 250.
— True Speed Communications —