SPEEDWAY, Ind. — With adjacent streets decked out in Indianapolis Motor Speedway banners and neighborhoods displaying NASCAR and other motorsports-related memorabilia on front lawns, Brickyard 400 weekend feels big around the 2.5-mile facility just outside Indiana’s capital city.
No other driver in the Cup Series garage understands the sense of that spectacle more than Indiana native Chase Briscoe.
From the town of Mitchell, around 90 minutes south of the track, Briscoe frequented Indianapolis and discussed his very first trip to the track.
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“I was seven years old and that was the first time I’d ever seen this race track, and I remember getting my uniform embroidered,” Briscoe said Friday during a press conference. “Getting my name on it, coming over here, coming inside the race track, and that was the first time I’d ever been inside the walls at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Just being in absolute awe. First off, the race track that’s this big. I’ve been to dirt tracks my whole life that were a quarter of a mile, and then to see this place and the grandstands, it was just unbelievable.”
Briscoe also mentioned attending the Indianapolis 500 and Brickyard 400 as a kid and sliding past the notoriously strict security to get to the garages for autographs.
But one of the standout memories for Briscoe is fellow Hoosier and NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart winning his first Brickyard 400 in 2005 with Joe Gibbs Racing. Twenty years later and also piloting a hot rod for JGR, a victory at Indy would mean everything for Briscoe.
“It’d definitely be really, really special,” Briscoe said. “I actually texted Tony this week about that. We went to the new museum and they had that 2005 car over there, and I took a picture of it. I sent it to him. I said, ‘hopefully another Hoosier can win 20 years later.’ So, yeah, it would be super, super special. I mean, there’d be nothing like it for me, just from a personal standpoint, than to win this race.”
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Briscoe has won at Indianapolis, but it came on the road-course layout in 2020 amid a nine-win Xfinity Series campaign for him. He nearly shocked the Cup field in 2021 on the road course. However, a late scrap with Denny Hamlin for the lead resulted in Briscoe going off-course and rejoining the track before spinning the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver. Briscoe was penalized in the final laps for cutting the course and he ultimately finished 26th.
In the lead-up to Sunday’s Brickyard 400 (2 p.m. ET, TNT Sports/truTV, IMS Radio, HBO Max, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the idea of winning at the famed oval began seeping into Briscoe’s mind after hopping off the simulator in preparation for the 160-lapper.
“I was driving home and just kind of running laps through my head, and, yeah, I’ve never really thought about winning a race before,” Briscoe said. “It was just kind of like imagining what it would be like to win here and do it in the Brickyard 400 and I’ve watched Tony’s race the night before just randomly on YouTube, and just watching his celebration, everything. I just kind of put myself in that moment just as an Indiana guy, and it’s just different. I don’t know how to explain i. I just thought about it. I mean, there’s a quick 20-second thought, but just got goosebumps literally as I was driving down the road thinking about it.”
Briscoe admitted that he wasn’t in a position to win last year’s Brickyard 400. It was his first on the oval after the Cup Series ran the road course from 2021-2023.
This year, he’s got a different attitude and the results prove it.
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While Briscoe’s had growing pains adapting to his first campaign piloting the No. 19 Toyota for JGR, he’s already scored the most top fives he’s ever had in a Cup season (eight entering Indy) and matched his career high in top 10s (10, 2022). With a win at Pocono last month to clinch a playoff berth and entering this weekend off back-to-back runner-up results at Sonoma and Dover, Briscoe can sense that he’ll have the car under him to compete and fully understands the magnitude the moment would mean for his career to have his first crown-jewel win be at Indianapolis.
“If I was able to win the Brickyard 400, it would be the biggest win of my career,” Briscoe said. “I don’t think I could ever win a race that would mean more to me. I just was talking about how many times I came here as a kid and what this place meant to me. So for me, yeah, winning on Sunday, there’s no race I’d rather win in the world.”