It turned out to be quite the eventful weekend for Chase Briscoe.
After having his likely future plans accidentally leaked on Friday by Christopher Bell, Briscoe had his work cut out for him at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sunday. After qualifying was cancelled due to rain on Saturday, Briscoe started the day in 23rd position.
In his final year at Stewart-Haas Racing, which will shutter at the end of the year in its current form, Briscoe has struggled to find consistency. He entered the weekend outside the playoff conversation, below the cutoff for contention.
Leaving, he’s still below the cutoff but now very much in the conversation after using NASCAR’s weather woes to his advantage. After a two-hour, 19-minute rain delay, the race restarted on wet-weather tires once standing water was removed from the racing surface.
Briscoe, whose background is in dirt sprint cars, shone under those conditions.
With wet-weather tires on the cars and the track surface damp to wet, New Hampshire’s racing surface opened up to multiple racing grooves, from the apron to the outside wall. Briscoe used a combination of good pit decisions before the rain and hard racing under the wet conditions to charge to second place after battling Josh Berry door-to-door on a final overtime restart.
Briscoe, who is likely to join Joe Gibbs Racing next year to replace the retiring Martin Truex Jr., said after the race that under normal circumstances, he didn’t have a top-five car.
“(Bell) was really, really good all day long. For us to finish second (was) a good solid day with a 25th-place car. We were not very good.
“When the rain came, we were 60 points below the cut line, and now we’re 25 points below the cut line. We just needed a good day. Second is great. But even if we were just to remain in the top 10, that was going to be a good way to kind of get back and stop the bleeding. Hopefully we can just continue to build on this.”
This has been a difficult year for Briscoe. Even before the announcement that Stewart-Haas was closing, his team, like other Ford organizations, struggled with the new Dark Horse body. That seems to be changing for the better as Fords have shown marked improvement in recent weeks, but Sunday is Briscoe’s first finish better than 17th since he finished fifth at Darlington in May.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Briscoe said after the race. “Hopefully this kickstarted some confidence.”
There’s a lot of racing left for Briscoe’s No. 14 team before the driver departs for his new ride, and he’s not so far out of playoff contention that a strong summer can’t give Stewart-Haas a final shot at a title as the sun sets.
Especially if it rains.
About the author
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.
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Well at least chase briscoe has a good chance of winning again and I hope that he will find another team that he can race for next season.
Did you happen to read in the article that he is replacing Truex at JGR.
LOL beat me by 15 minutes.
How could you have watched the race and not known that?
🤣
Let’s see how Briscoe does the rest of the season.