Chase Briscoe
Chase Briscoe is a third-generation racer whose career began on dirt tracks in and around his home state of Indiana. Since he was 13, Briscoe has followed in his grandfather’s and father’s footsteps, racing sprint cars on the rough and tumble bullrings of the Midwest.
It’s a lineage that makes Briscoe a natural fit for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), as the NASCAR team is co-owned by three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Tony Stewart, an Indiana native who also began his career on dirt and continued to race in the discipline throughout his hall-of-fame career.
Briscoe is well on his way to expanding his family’s name into NASCAR. After winning the NASCAR Cup Series rookie-of-the-year title in 2021, Briscoe won in just the fourth start of his sophomore season. On March 13, 2022 at Phoenix Raceway, Briscoe took the checkered flag in just his 40th career Cup Series start. The victory secured Briscoe’s place in the NASCAR Playoffs and earned him the honor of being the 200th Cup Series winner in NASCAR history.
Briscoe climbed to the Cup Series after a breakout year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series – the stepping-stone division to Cup.
Briscoe won a series-best nine Xfinity Series races in 2020, earning his promotion to Cup in 2021. The Mitchell, Indiana-native took over SHR’s vaunted No. 14 Ford Mustang, which was first driven by Stewart (2009-2016) and then Clint Bowyer (2017-2020).
Briscoe has delivered ever since he joined SHR in 2018, where he drove a part-time Xfinity Series schedule split between SHR and Roush-Fenway Racing. This was exemplified on Sept. 29, 2018 when in his 14th career Xfinity Series start, Briscoe won the inaugural race at the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval. It was Briscoe’s first Xfinity Series win and it came with SHR, as Briscoe tapped into his dirt-track experience to wheel his Ford Mustang to a strong 1.478-second margin of victory.
“It drove like a dirt track instead of a road course, and it felt like I was in a sprint car,” said Briscoe after the race. “I just tried to make sure the rear tires never spun. I had to give up a little time coming off the corner, but I’d make it back up on the straightaway, and that’s why I was always better at the end of the run.”
A prelude to Briscoe’s Xfinity Series win at Charlotte was his victory two months earlier in the NASCAR Truck Series race at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. In his lone Truck Series start of 2018, Briscoe led three times for a race-high 54 laps on the three-quarter mile dirt oval, but he still had to battle throughout the 153-lap race, taking the lead on the final lap to score his second career Truck Series win.
It’s no surprise that Briscoe’s two NASCAR victories in 2018 had ties to dirt. After all, the Briscoe name is a venerable one in the sprint-car community.
Chase’s grandfather, Richard Briscoe, is a legendary sprint car team owner, who over time has fielded entries for 37 different drivers including such renowned wheelmen as Chuck Amati, Dave Blaney, Dick Gaines, Jack Hewitt, Steve Kinser and Rich Vogler. Chase’s father, Kevin Briscoe, raced sprint cars for over 20 years and won more than 150 feature events. He claimed track championships at Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Indiana, and won five track titles at Bloomington (Ind.) Speedway, including a streak of three straight.
?Chase Briscoe’s first time behind the wheel of a racecar came in 2001. Driving a quarter midget, he won his first heat race and then won the feature event that evening. Briscoe moved on to mini sprints and, when he was 13, stepped into a 410 sprint car. In his first race, he finished 10th in a 40-car field. And in a rookie season that saw 37 starts, Briscoe racked up eight top-five and 17 top-10 finishes, including a win in the last race of the season where he broke NASCAR Hall of Famer and four-time Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon’s record as being the youngest person to win a 410 sprint car race.
Briscoe continued to race 410 sprint cars in the Midwest but, by age 19, finances had become strained and Briscoe’s future racing prospects appeared dim. On a whim, Briscoe applied to a Facebook ad promoting the Stock Car Dream Challenge, which was billed as “a chance to join Michael Waltrip Racing as a rookie stock-car driver” despite having never driven a stock car on pavement or a car with a manual transmission.
Out of more than 700 applicants, Briscoe was one of nine prospects selected to participate in the three-day event at Charlotte. The contest used racecars from the Richard Petty Driving Experience, and it tested each driver in short-track racing, road-course racing, speedway racing, car control and endurance, along with off-track elements, such as media interviews.
Briscoe won all but one of the on-track competitions and appeared a lock to win the event, with fellow competitors congratulating him by the end of the third day after Briscoe had advanced to the final round. Yet Briscoe didn’t win the competition. However, he had won over the Richard Petty Driving Experience instructors and Michael Waltrip Racing executives. Both told Briscoe and his parents that he did, in fact, have what it takes to compete and succeed in NASCAR.
But, how to get there? With determination and perseverance.
Briscoe moved to Charlotte in 2014. He slept on friends’ couches and air mattresses. He worked for free. He stuck his foot in doors and made opportunities happen.
One such opportunity was an ARCA Menards Series test at Nashville (Tenn.) Fairgrounds Speedway in early 2015 for Cunningham Motorsports. Briscoe was fast, but there wasn’t an immediate place for him, at least in the driver’s seat. So, he volunteered at the shop, arriving at 7 a.m. and leaving 12-13 hours later. Team owner Briggs Cunningham III saw Briscoe’s work ethic and, with an established history of helping aspiring racecar drivers, Cunningham decided to let Briscoe run two ARCA races – July 24 at Indianapolis Raceway Park and Sept. 19 at Salem (Ind.) Speedway. Briscoe responded by finishing 10th in his ARCA debut and followed it with a fifth-place finish at Salem.
Briscoe thanked Cunningham for the opportunity, first by phone and then in person. As Briscoe made the offseason drive to Indiana, he took a 45-minute detour to Cunningham’s home in nearby Kentucky. “I just want to shake your hand and say, ‘Thank you,’” said Briscoe upon arriving at Cunningham’s home. The two hit it off and, after a long conversation, Briscoe headed home. The next day he got a call. Cunningham’s No. 77 Ford was his for the 2016 ARCA season.
The switch from sprint cars to stock cars was finally on. Briscoe responded by winning six races and the championship by a whopping 535 points.
Boosted by that ARCA title, Briscoe thrived in his transition to NASCAR. He advanced to the NASCAR Truck Series in 2017, earning four poles and winning the season-ending Ford EcoBoost 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. His 10 top-five and 14 top-10s allowed Briscoe to make the playoffs, finish sixth in points, and score the series’ rookie-of-the-year and most-popular-driver awards.
Briscoe parlayed a limited Xfinity Series schedule in 2018, where he drove for both SHR and Roush-Fenway Racing, into a fulltime drive for SHR in 2019. And in his first full season of Xfinity Series competition, Briscoe scored a berth in the NASCAR Playoffs by earning his second career Xfinity Series win in July at Iowa Speedway in Newton. He also scored two poles and 13 top-fives and 26 top-10s to finish fifth in the championship standings, all of which earned Briscoe the rookie-of-the-year title and set him up for his nine-win season in 2020.
Briscoe resides in Monroe, North Carolina, with his wife, Marissa, and their son, Brooks Wayne Cunningham.
