KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Chase Briscoe has a lot on his mind these days.
For the last five weeks, the Stewart-Haas Racing driver has been in regular contact with his future boss, Joe Gibbs, over a very important issue: getting home in case his wife, Marissa, gives birth to twins.
Last weekend, the owner of Joe Gibbs Racing offered Briscoe his helicopter in case he needed to travel back from Bristol Motor Speedway at a moment’s notice.
This weekend in Kansas City, a private jet is on standby.
“If I get a call, I told (Marissa) the earliest I’ll probably be home is 7 o’clock by the time I would get on a plane,” Briscoe said Saturday (Sept. 28) at Kansas Speedway. “I actually flew (home from Bristol) on the Gibbs team plane, which was a little awkward after knocking some of their cars out (of the playoffs), but yeah, Coach has been awesome in the whole process.”
It’s all part of a “contingency plan” for Briscoe to be able to welcome the twins, the Briscoes’ second time having a baby.
“It obviously would get tricky if it comes at certain times, but I even told (crew chief) Richard (Boswell) if it happens during the race, don’t tell me,” Briscoe said. “Just tell me as soon as we take the checkered flag, ‘hey look, Marissa went into labor,’ so I can get out of the car and just go as fast as I can.”
Friday night (Sept. 27), the Briscoes had a false alarm. Marissa experienced contractions and they paid a visit to the hospital.
Contractions weren’t something she experienced with their first kid, Brooks.
“She wasn’t really sure what it felt like anyways,” Briscoe said.
After about three hours at the hospital, they left, got Cook Out for dinner and went home.
But the contractions were still happening as Briscoe left home in North Carolina around 6 a.m. Saturday to make his way halfway across the country.
“Once I landed, that was the first thing I was worried about it the whole plane ride,” Briscoe said. “(Marissa) said that she hasn’t had one since (he left). I just told her to literally lay down, don’t do anything until Monday. And then Monday, you can get on your yoga ball, bounce all around, we can walk miles, whatever you want to do. So far, so good. The doctor seemed to think that they weren’t gonna make it till October 8th, but we will see.”
This all happened as Briscoe geared up for the second round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, where Briscoe is the only driver representing SHR in the team’s final year of existence.
So, no pressure.
Oh, wait. There’s more.
Monday, after he finished 18th at Bristol and locked himself into the Round of 12, Briscoe got a phone call about a change Stewart-Haas Racing would be making.
The organization was swapping the pit crews of Briscoe’s No. 14 and Josh Berry’s No. 4 car.
“The pit crew thing is tough, because the guys that I’ve had have been on it for the last year and a half,” said Briscoe, who noted the crew he’ll have starting Sunday (Sept. 29) is his original team, which was moved over to the No. 4 for the playoffs last year.
The fourth year Cup driver texted his pit crew to let them know they were “just as much of the 14 team as you were last week.”
“I know it probably doesn’t feel that way right now, but obviously … everybody at SHR felt like that’s what gave us the best opportunity to try to move on and try to advance to the next round,” Briscoe said.
He pointed back to the team’s “struggle” at Bristol, where the No. 14 was a top-five car, but slow pit stops cost him track position.
“You don’t want guys to be on the 14 and get kicked off, but that’s the decision that was made and you gotta just try to move on from it,” Briscoe said. “I told Josh (Berry) on the way over here today that ‘your pit crew gonna be on it this weekend. They’ve got a lot to prove.'”
So does Briscoe.
After winning his way into the playoffs in the Southern 500, Briscoe overcame a DNF at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the playoff opener to finished sixth at Watkins Glen International. He then earned enough stage points at Bristol to advance out of the first round.
Now Briscoe will roll off the grid at Kansas Speedway while sitting 11th in the playoff standings, seven points below the cutoff.
“It’s honestly been kind of similar to 2022 in that sense where everybody said that we were going to be out the first round and we kind of knew that we were way better of a team than that,” Briscoe said. “From that standpoint, it’s been fun to kind of bust everybody’s brackets again. Hopefully, we can do like the last time and make a really deep playoff run.”
Unfortunately for the No. 14 team, Briscoe hasn’t fared well in his starts at Kansas in the Next Gen era, never finishing better than 13th. In the spring, he was 21st at the end of the race.
It’s been a while since the Cup Series even visited a true 1.5-mile track, which came in May in the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600.
Briscoe was 25th when that race was made official after 249 laps.
However, he believes there’s things from his winning effort at Darlington Raceway that are applicable to Kansas.
“Aero does make a little bit of an issue (at Darlington),” Briscoe said. “This track does have a little bit of tire fall off, like a place like Darlington does. Obviously, not near as extreme.”
In the spring visit to Kansas, Briscoe qualified 10th before finishing outside the top 20.
“Last time we came here we were able to qualify in the final round and do things like that, so I’m confident that we should be able to be in the mix,” Briscoe said. “But it’s still obviously going to take execution and just a full complete weekend.
“That’s the difference in the playoffs it doesn’t take just a full complete day. It really takes the whole weekend and you know it starts in practice and obviously qualifying.”
By the end of qualifying Saturday, he was 1-for-2.
Briscoe and the No. 14 were 31st in practice after more than 20 laps around the 1.5-mile track. When it came to 10-lap averages, he was 33rd.
However, some switch was flipped in qualifying.
Briscoe was able to advance to the second round and coaxed the ninth-best speed (175.965 mph) out of his car. That put him ahead of fellow playoff driver Daniel Suarez.
“Practice, for sure, we just weren’t very good,” Briscoe told Frontstretch. “I still don’t feel really good about it, just as far as how hard the car is to drive and the balance.
“I don’t know what to think for tomorrow. It could go a lot of different directions.”
Briscoe wasn’t even sure what adjustments Boswell and his crew made between sessions. He said that the cars of Berry and Noah Gragson came to the track with setups that were “at least close enough” to his that “we can kind of take some things from each one and, where we’re struggling, apply it.”
Regardless of his ability to secure better track position in qualifying, Briscoe believes Sunday will be, “truthfully, a long, uphill battle.”
About the author
Daniel McFadin is a 10-year veteran of the NASCAR media corp. He wrote for NBC Sports from 2015 to October 2020. He currently works full time for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is lead reporter and an editor for Frontstretch. He is also host of the NASCAR podcast "Dropping the Hammer with Daniel McFadin" presented by Democrat-Gazette.
You can email him at danielmcfadin@gmail.com.
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