SPEEDWAY, Ind. — The week before the NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover Motor Speedway, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Chase Briscoe experienced “a quick 20-second thought” that gave him “goosebumps.”
The thought — one Briscoe claims doesn’t usually cross his mind — came to him while he drove home from a simulator session.
The race he’d been preparing for: Sunday’s (July 27) Brickyard 400 at his home track of Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“I’ve never really thought about winning a race before,” Briscoe said Friday (July 25).
As he drove, Briscoe allowed himself to fantasize about winning the Brickyard 400.
Briscoe pictured himself taking the checkered flag and imagined “how loud I would yell on the radio. I normally don’t really get too worked up.”
The thought would be obvious for Briscoe.
He’s the native of Mitchell — a town in south Indiana that didn’t get a second stop light until the mid-2010s — who grew up watching his idol and fellow Hoosier, Tony Stewart, win the Brickyard twice, in 2005 and 2007.
The night before, Briscoe had gotten sucked into watching Stewart’s 2005 triumph, courtesy of YouTube’s algorithm.
“You’re just watching his celebration and everything,” Briscoe said. “I just kind of put myself in that moment. As an Indiana guy, it’s just different, like I don’t know how to explain it.”
The odds of Briscoe’s rush hour visualization coming to fruition increased significantly on Saturday.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver beat out Bubba Wallace to capture the pole for Sunday’s race.
It’s his fifth pole of the season and made Briscoe the first driver in NASCAR history to capture the poles for the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600 and the Brickyard 400 in the same season.
“The Daytona 500 one was cool, going three in a row was cool, but being able to sit on the pole here is just so special,” Briscoe said. “I got out of the car, and hearing the crowd screaming – I don’t have that happen anywhere else.”
Briscoe claims there’s no added pressure for him this weekend, even given the personal magnitude of winning a race he considers a bigger deal than winning the Daytona 500.
“It honestly is not pressure,” Briscoe said. “I’ve talked to Tony (Stewart) about it. When you are from Indiana, and you come here – you’ve seen it with Tony and (Ryan) Newman. Jeff Gordon was kind of a transplant to Indiana, but certainly with Tony – you just find that, like I said, extra five, 10 that you didn’t know you had and you really put that pressure on yourself when you come here.
“I think a lot of it is because of the Hoosier fan base gets behind you unlike anywhere else. There is no other racetrack that we go to, when I hear a driver from that state does the crowd go nuts. It is different in the state of Indiana, and for me to be that guy for the fans here, it is just really, really cool.”
Were Briscoe to win, native and adopted sons of Indiana would have nine out of 29 victories in the 400.
As this week progressed, with him returning home to Mitchell on Tuesday and even attending his sister’s wedding Friday night, Briscoe found time to visit the newly renovated IMS Museum.
Among the racing relics on display inside: Stewart’s No. 20 car from his 2005 win.
“I took a picture of it, and I sent it to him and said ‘hopefully another Hoosier can win 20 years later,'” Briscoe recalled.
If he does win, Briscoe already know how he plans to celebrate.
“You would see all the stuff, all the stops,” Briscoe said. “I’d be climbing the fence and stopping where my family was sitting (in turn 1) and doing all the things.”
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.