Chase Briscoe hopes his dirt track experience will pay dividends in Monday’s Food City Dirt Race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
The Cup Series rookie is off to a somewhat challenging start this season as Briscoe makes the transition from the Xfinity Series to NASCAR’s top division. But the Stewart-Haas Racing pilot believes he has an opportunity to shine a little brighter Sunday when the Cup Series races on a dirt surface for the first time since 1970.
“I hope so,” Briscoe said. “I definitely don’t think it can hurt. I feel like the first couple weeks, with the exception of last week, we’ve had good speed. Phoenix, I felt like we could have run (in the) seventh or eighth area and we had a 24-second green flag pit stop with 50 to go and it just kind of killed us, so I feel like from a speed standpoint we’ve been good up until last week, and hopefully this week will finally be the one week where we can just get the results because we haven’t really been able to show the results side of things.”
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After winning nine times in the Xfinity Series a year ago, Briscoe was tabbed by SHR to graduate to the Cup Series and take the ride vacated by Clint Bowyer, who moved to the FOX Sports TV booth. Briscoe made no bones about the fact he knew the transition would be a process and is taking the sluggish start with a grain of salt.
“I just try to keep in perspective that Chase Elliott is the last champion and it took him nearly 100 races to get a win, so just trying to remember it’s not gonna come right away,” Briscoe explained. “Every rookie I feel like struggles a little bit and it just takes time to get your feet underneath you. Obviously, it’s no secret right now that we’re kind of struggling as a company, so that’s not helping either, but I feel like we’ve had decent speed and we just haven’t been able to execute.
“I feel like I’ve learned so much over these first six races that I know I’m gonna be twice the race car driver in another six races and by the end of the year it’s gonna be incredible growth, so I just have to try and learn as much as I can here early, but it’s definitely frustrating to not even say we have a top 10 right now or even a top 15.”
Briscoe is an accomplished dirt track racer who has had great success in midget and sprint car racing. While some of his competitors with little or no experience will be trying to find their way around Bristol’s dirt surface this weekend, Briscoe is hoping his background will be beneficial to a solid finish.
“Yeah, I hope so,” he said. “I think it’s a great opportunity to go run good, just from an experience standpoint. I’ll be one of the guys in the field that probably has more dirt experience than a lot of them, so this is really gonna be the only week maybe outside of the Indy road course all year long where I actually have experience where the Cup field doesn’t, so being able to hopefully use that advantage.
“Hopefully, we get it right. I think setup is still very important on the dirt side. Just because you have a dirt background still doesn’t mean you’re gonna win this race. There are a lot of variables that go into it, so I don’t know. Hopefully, we can have a good run because we definitely need it right now and it would be a good momentum booster into the couple weeks off.”
