Racing in Kansas: NASCAR’s Chase Briscoe aims for edge at local Speedway this weekend
As a struggling rookie driver in the NASCAR Cup series, Chase Briscoe is looking for any advantage he can get. And Kansas Speedway just might give him an edge Sunday.
This is the track where he won the season-ending race that capped his 2016 ARCA championship, propelling him to the NASCAR truck series.
It’s the track where he posted his Xfinity series-leading ninth win of 2020, paving the way for his promotion to the Cup series.
And it’s where Briscoe will pilot the vaunted No. 14 Stewart-Haas Ford in the NASCAR Cup Buschy McBusch Race 400 on Sunday afternoon.
“Kansas has certainly always been a place that has been good to me, no doubt about that,” said Briscoe, who also led 159 of 167 laps of the 2019 Xfinity race at Kansas, only to finish third. “Everything I have run there, I have had pretty good speed. I love the area around it. There’s a lot of good restaurants. It’s just a really good atmosphere. The casino is right there … I don’t know if that has something to do with it, too, but I always look forward to going there.
“I don’t know if it’s going to carry over to the Cup deal, but hopefully it does.”
When Briscoe arrived in Kansas for last October’s Xfinity race, the worst-kept secret in NASCAR was he would be replacing Clint Bowyer in the No. 14 Ford. Stewart-Haas Racing even lent him Bowyer’s pit crew for the event.
“It was definitely in the works,” said Briscoe, 26. “I know, right around playoff time is when things started being talked about. It was announced right after Kansas, so it was definitely done by then.”
That race would be Briscoe’s final win of the 2020 season as he finished fourth in the Xfinity Series. Now, he’s bidding to become just the third driver to win NASCAR Rookie of the Year honors in the Cup, Xfinity (2019) and Camping World Trucks Series (2017).
But it hasn’t been easy. In 10 starts, Briscoe’s best finish was 11th last week at Talladega, where he even led a lap for the first time in a Cup race.
“You never know how it’s going to go at Talladega, and I was hoping this could be a race for us to turn things around and get a good finish,” Briscoe said. “Momentum is always a good thing. This is the confidence builder we need.”
Briscoe is a third-generation racer whose career began on dirt tracks in and around his home state of Indiana, where his boyhood idol was Hall of Famer Stewart, a fellow Hoosier and his current car owner, So he understands the expectations that come with driving the hallowed No. 14 made famous by A.J. Foyt, Stewart as well as the popular Bowyer, who is from nearby Emporia, Kansas.
“It’s one of the more iconic numbers in NASCAR, for sure, maybe even in motorsports,” Briscoe said. “It’s definitely an added pressure with the 14. I would say it’s in the top five of NASCAR numbers …. one that carries a lot of fans, whether it’s from Tony or Clint or Foyt.”
Those expectations have to be tempered with patience as Briscoe, without the benefit of practice or testing due to the pandemic, sits 28th in the standings, though he leads Anthony Alfredo by 55 poiints for the lead among rookies.
“I knew going into the Cup series, it was definitely going to be a challenge, it was going to be a very big learning curve,” he said. “I knew I was for sure going to be humbled to a certain extent, but I don’t think anybody can explain to you how tough that jump really is.
“It’s not like anything I have ever had happen in any form of motor sports from one series to another. Everybody in the Cup series is so good, everybody’s cars are so good. You race, truthfully, as hard as you do for a win in Xfinity to finish 25th in Cup. It’s so hard. You have to keep it in perspective that it’s going to take time, everybody who moves up as a rookie struggles for a season or two. You try to keep that in the back of your mind, keep your confidence up and try to learn as much as you can at the beginning of the year.”
Briscoe isn’t alone in his frustration as none of his SHR teammates has posted a win in the first 10 races of the season.
“When you get to this level, you’ve shown you can do it, you’ve raced a long time, and understand the things you need to do,” said teammate Kevin Harvick, the 2014 Cup champion. “Jumping in a slow car your rookie year and not having any practices is a tough scenario.
“To solve that problem is going to be very rewarding for him as he goes forward. Chase is one of the best humans you ever want to meet, and I think he’ll be just fine. Not an ideal situation to start, but it will make him better in the long run.”
Briscoe has overcome adversity before, both racing sprint car for a family-owned team as a youngster and when he was between jobs after Brad Keselowski Racing shut down its NASCAR trucks team in 2018.
“There have been a lot of times, sprint car racing growing up, we didn’t necessarily have nice stuff,” Briscoe recalled. “We were always using used stuff and even things back from the ‘90s in late 2000s just trying to get by. There were times I thought I’d be done. I moved to North Carolina and slept on couches and was volunteering at different race shops for three years …
“I was practically about to move back to Indiana and got a call from a team about doing a test for them. That turned everything around. “
Briscoe, driving with Ford sponsorship, won the Xfinity race at the Charlotte Roval in 2018, and that led to a full-time ride with Stewart Haas for 2019 when he won at Iowa and earned Rookie of the Year honors.
“That got everything going again,” he said. “But there were a lot of times where I felt my career could have taken a very different turn if one little thing wouldn’t have happened.”
Kansas Speedway schedule
Saturday
Dutch Boy 150, 12:30 p.m., FS1
Saturday
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Wise Power 200, 6:30 p.m.,FS1
Sunday
NASCAR Cup Buschy McBusch Race 400, 2 p.m., FS1
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 11:18 AM with the headline "Racing in Kansas: NASCAR’s Chase Briscoe aims for edge at local Speedway this weekend."