LAS VEGAS — It’s plausible to think that many people didn’t have Chase Briscoe making it out of the opening round of the postseason. But with two races remaining in the Round of 8, the first-year playoff driver is within striking distance of the Championship 4.
Briscoe, who has historically performed well at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, had his hands full in the opening stage of Sunday’s South Point 400. On lap 69, race leader Bubba Wallace put the No. 14 Ford a lap down. Fortunately for Briscoe, Kyle Busch spun from a top-five position eight laps later and he was the recipient of the free pass.
“I was confident that we were going to get it better,” Briscoe said of his following the race. “I knew we weren’t that far off; we just had a bad run and I got stuck behind.
“We’ve got to get better at the start of races. If you’re fast, you’re in a lot better spot for the whole race.”
Getting out of the gate slow has been the theme of Briscoe’s playoffs. In the playoff opener at Darlington, the No. 14 car was slotted 29th after the first stage. The speed didn’t get better throughout the race and he finished 27th.
The following week at Kansas, Briscoe was 25th at the end of the first stage. The Stewart-Haas Racing team made the necessary adjustments to score a respectable 13th-place finish. In the opening round finale at Bristol, he avoided chaos, scored stage points and made up an 11-point deficit to make the Round of 12.
At Texas, it was the same struggle, as the No. 14 car finished 27th in the first stage. He wasn’t much better in Stage 2, finishing 25th. But crew chief Johnny Klausmeier made a strategy call towards the end of that race that gave Briscoe track position and he finished fifth — his first top-10 finish since the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day Weekend.
Since Texas, however, the No. 14 team has become consistent in the finishing order. Briscoe rounded out the top 10 at Talladega, finished ninth at the Charlotte Roval, and on Sunday had another Texas-esque performance, where he found track position late and was in contention for the win.
“Just never giving up,” Briscoe said of overcoming the odds after early race struggles. “A lot of things that can happen. Everyone at Stewart-Haas Racing works way too hard for me to just give up.”
After getting the free pass on Sunday at Las Vegas, Briscoe was just 19th at the end of the second stage. The No. 14 pit crew stepped up and gained “seven or eight spots twice.” That gave their driver a fighting chance at the win, as he was leading the race at the final restart with 16 laps to go.
Unfortunately for Briscoe, Ross Chastain made a bold three-wide move into Turn 3 on the restart, passing both the No. 14 car and Justin Haley to take the lead. Briscoe slipped to fourth at the checkered flag, good enough for his fourth straight top-10 finish.
Yet, Briscoe left Sin City frustrated.
“You can’t control the cautions, but if the caution doesn’t come out when I was right behind [Justin Haley]; I was pretty confident I was going to win the race,” he said. “When [Chastain] got the lead, I knew I was pretty much done from trying to win the race.
“Just frustrated because I could taste it there for a second and knew how close it was. Felt like I could have done a little bit better job, especially that last restart.”
Briscoe had made up his mind that he was going to accelerate at the beginning of the restart zone, hoping to catch his competition sleeping. Instead, he wasn’t paying attention and when he looked up in his mirror, the row behind him had timed it.
“That’s something I felt was 100% on me,” he said. “Should have done a better job there in that situation.”
The Cup Series heads to Homestead, arguably Briscoe’s best track on the circuit. While his lone Cup start resulted in an 18th-place finish, he does have a win in the Xfinity Series at the track and loves to rip the wall.
But it goes back to putting a full race together, as Briscoe believes stage points will be valuable.
“It’s a huge deficit and a huge hole we have to dig out of,” Briscoe noted. “That’s the thing we have to get better. This final round, you have to get stage points. If you don’t get stage points, you’re not going to move on.”
Briscoe sits just nine points below the cutline entering Homestead.