Chase Briscoe will be a desperate driver on a desperate mission Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.
The second year NASCAR Cup series driver with Stewart-Haas Racing is currently in his first Cup Playoff run having survived to make it to the Round of 8. After Sunday, only four drivers will be left, and with Joey Logano already locked into the Championship 4, only three of those will come from the remaining 7 drivers. Among those remaining drivers Briscoe is at the bottom of the list in points.
That means that in order to advance to the Championship 4, he will have to win Sunday.
For Briscoe, who earned his way into the Playoffs with a win at Phoenix in the spring, his strategy remains the same as it always has.
“Every weekend you’re trying to win,” Briscoe said. “I think maybe knowing that you’re in a must-win makes it a little bit easier to maybe try to win the race just from a strategy standpoint because you don’t have to go for the points, where like on a road course at the Roval you kind of shoot yourself in the foot to try to get points and you don’t really have a shot to win the race.
“I think for us this week knowing that we’re in a must-win it maybe makes it a little bit easier from a strategy standpoint if the cautions fall the right way, but we go to the racetrack every weekend looking to win.”
In his second full season in the Cup series, Briscoe said he isn’t disappointed to be in a must-win situation at this point of the Playoffs.
“It’s not as disappointing as the other eight guys that are already knocked out,” he said. “We still have a one in eight chance. It’s a slim chance, but we still have a chance, where there are eight other guys who don’t even have a shot to be in the final four. There’s still a lot to be proud of. It’s disappointing that we’re in a must-win. I felt like if we could come here and kind of do the same as we did the other rounds of the playoffs, where we could be just within 10 points we had a chance to go out there and point our way in, but we’re gonna have to earn it and that’s how it should be.”
Briscoe was fast in Saturday’s practice and qualified third for Sunday’s race.
“Starting third is better than starting 13th.,” Briscoe said. “For us, we’ve got to win the race. It would have been a lot easier to start on the pole and try to lead them all, but there are a lot of things that come with qualifying on the pole here from pit stall selection and things like that. That’s the frustrating part.”
Briscoe’s strong practice and qualifying run got the attention of the fastest driver in the field, Kyle Larson who won the pole. Larson is the reigning Cup series champion and has already been eliminated from the Playoffs.
“He looked really strong in practice,” Larson said. “He’s definitely one of the most aggressive drivers in the field, and then you throw in the fact that he has to win to advance. I’m sure if he’s anywhere near the front of the field at the end, it’s going to get wild. We’ll see… hopefully I’m in front of it or in front of him and can avoid any issues. He could get to the lead and walk away with this thing too. That’s how good I thought his car looked in practice.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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