Chase Briscoe needs a win at the Charlotte Roval this weekend to make it through to the Round of 8, but that is not a likely outcome given his record on road courses. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver has started 23 road course races in the Cup Series and secured six finishes inside the top 10. He doesn’t believe that he is a below-average race car driver on such tracks. However, the Next Gen car has played a good part in his struggles.
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His best finish on road courses is sixth place, which he has achieved on several tracks like COTA, Road America, Indianapolis, and Watkins Glen. His best performance on the Charlotte Roval resulted in a ninth-place finish. He can expect things to be trickier this time around with Turn 7 of the track modified to be a narrow hairpin.
His No. 14 Ford Mustang will have to tackle the bottleneck effect and slow down a lot to smoothly go through that part of the track. Making passes in that stretch will be a greater challenge. He spoke to the press recently about his chances of success and said, “I feel like I’m above average.”
“I’ve definitely had way more success in the lower series compared to Cup, where I’ve been kind of hit-or-miss. We’d run really, really good, or we were just off. Truthfully, I feel like the NextGen car has definitely hurt me quite a bit on the road-course side.” The upcoming race is a wildcard, much like the previous one in Talladega, and Briscoe will hope for luck to be on his side.
Briscoe continues to be positive about road courses despite struggles
Despite his unimpressive record, Briscoe gets excited every time he goes to road courses. He admitted that it used to be a frustrating affair, but now that he has won road course races in other divisions, he has found some much-needed confidence. He will hope to replicate the success from the lower tiers in the Cup Series this Sunday.
He said, “Having a positive attitude at any racetrack is important. For me, I enjoy road-course races but, truthfully, I used to be terrible at it. So, it kind of got frustrating at times. Then finally something just clicked with me and I was able to win a couple of road-course races and, now, every time we go to a road course, I’m super excited.”
This is Stewart-Haas Racing’s final season in the NASCAR Cup Series. Briscoe will look to give the best possible send-off to the team. It will be interesting to see how he navigates the Roval track as he tries to make it into the next round of the playoffs.
