With two of its longtime drivers Kevin Harvick and Aric Almirola out of the Stewart-Haas Racing garage, the Ford team now looks up to Chase Briscoe, who is currently the longest-tenured driver of the team. Hence, Briscoe needs to step up and assume the role of the leader soon. But his nature stands in his path. And it’s something that even his wife loathes.
Advertisement
But what is that nature? “I have to be controversial, and that’s something I hate,” revealed the soft-spoken driver. “I never want to argue with anybody; my wife gets so mad because I won’t argue. I’ll just sit there and take it, and I’m not gonna say anything.”
But being the leader, one has to. If one feels the urge to speak up for or against something, they should. “That’s something I’ve never done in my entire life. So I’m going to have to change. I don’t have to stand up and yell or anything, but I can still have a voice. And that’s something I struggle with, even when I know I’m 100 percent right on things. Like I just won’t say it, because I don’t want to have the argument or the conflict,” he admitted.
In the past, with Harvick and Almirola on the team, the #14 driver could just sit in the corner and they were the ones to navigate the competition meetings. “Not that I’m the guy now, but I have to have a little bit more voice than what I’ve had in the past,” added Briscoe.
Briscoe explains how racing at Daytona is different from racing at Atlanta
It has been twenty-four years since the NASCAR Cup Series season has featured two main events back-to-back at drafting tracks. And as that is about to happen at Atlanta after last week’s wreck fest at Daytona, Briscoe opened up about how he feels the racing at the AMS is different from that at the Daytona International Speedway.
“It’s similar in a sense, but very different in the sense of just how fast things happen. The mental side of Atlanta is, by far, the hardest thing we do all year long. It’s a mile shorter, so while it’s very, very easy to run wide open the whole time when you go to Daytona or Talladega, at Atlanta your car is struggling just to even get close to that,” he explained.
Briscoe feels like there’s a lot more to the team side of things at Atlanta as far as getting the balance of the car right. Furthermore, things happen fast here and just adapting to those and acting accordingly becomes a mental challenge for the drivers. According to reports, the weather in Hampton, Georgia, is expected to be sunny and in the high 60s during the race. This means the asphalt on the track is going to be bone dry, resulting in decreased grip on the zero-tread tires of the stock cars. How will all of that pan out for the drivers? Only time will tell.
