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In the Know – Indianapolis

In The Know – INDIANAPOLIS 

The Verizon 200 at the Brickyard serves as the fourth of six road-course races on the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series schedule. Get up-to-speed on race info, driver stats, our weekly wraps and more as we go road racing this weekend.

The Details

NASCAR Cup Series Overview

●  Event:  Verizon 200 at the Brickyard (Round 22 of 36)
●  Time/Date:  2:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, July 31
●  Location:  Indianapolis Motor Speedway
●  Layout:  2.439-mile, 14-turn road course
●  Laps/Miles:  82 laps / 200 miles
●  Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 15 laps / Stage 2: 20 laps / Final Stage: 47 laps
●  TV/Radio:  NBC / IMS Radio Network / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

BROADCAST

SHR FAST FACTS

Kevin Harvick:
Harvick, driver of the No. 4 GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing, has made a total of 52 NASCAR Cup Series starts on road courses. He has 21 starts at Sonoma, 20 at Watkins Glen, four at the Charlotte Roval, two apiece at COTA, Road America, and the road course at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, and one on the road course at Indianapolis – last year’s inaugural Verizon 200 at the Brickyard where Harvick finished 14th. He has scored two road-course wins – Watkins Glen in 2006 and Sonoma in 2017 – along with 11 top-fives and 26 top-10s with 195 laps led.

When Harvick scored his first road-course victory at Watkins Glen in 2006, he had to beat his current team owner to do it. Tony Stewart – the “Stewart” in Stewart-Haas Racing – had won the past two NASCAR Cup Series races at the 2.45-mile, seven-turn road course and was poised to capture a third straight win as he was leading Harvick with four laps to go in the 90-lap race. But Harvick, who had already led once for 24 laps, passed Stewart on lap 87 as the two drag-raced down the frontstretch and into turn one. Harvick held onto the lead despite Stewart in his rearview mirror, earning a margin of victory of .892 of a second.

Harvick’s second career road-course win also had a connection to Stewart. When Harvick won at Sonoma in 2017, he gave Stewart-Haas Racing its second straight victory at the 1.99-mile, 10-turn road course. The winner in 2016? None other than Stewart. It ended up being his 49th and final NASCAR Cup Series victory as Stewart retired from NASCAR racing at the conclusion of the season.

Aric Almirola:
After 21 races this season, Aric Almirola is the only driver in the NASCAR Cup Series without a DNF (Did Not Finish).

Almirola has 31 road-course starts in the NASCAR Cup Series with two top-10 finishes and a best of eighth at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, five top-20s at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International with a best finish of 12th, three top-20s on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval with a best finish of 14th, and a top-12 finish in the non-points Busch Clash in 2020 on the Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway road course.


Chase Briscoe:
Just 85 miles south of Indianapolis sits the town of Mitchell, Indiana. The old railroad town spans 3.6 square miles with a population of less than 4,000. But it was in the center of town at a family shop on 14th Street that a young boy watched his father and grandfather prepare cars for the local dirt tracks while dreaming of his shot of carrying on the family legacy and someday returning back home again to Indiana to race at the most famous venue in motorsports – the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This weekend, Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), will have two shots to once again kiss the bricks and climb the fence in victory at the Brickyard – first in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race driving the No. 07 Ford Mustang for SS Greenlight Racing, and then on Sunday in the Verizon 200 NASCAR Cup Series race.

The son of Kevin, an accomplished dirt racer, and grandson of Richard, a renowned car owner and builder, Briscoe aspired to follow in the footsteps of his favorite driver and fellow Hoosier Tony Stewart. Stewart, at the time a Cup Series champion, would return home to race at the local short tracks when not behind the wheel of the No. 14 SHR entry, often competing against Kevin as the youngest Briscoe looked on. He practiced his victory celebration dressed in a replica of Stewart’s uniform and helmet until he was old enough to start racing himself. At the age of 14, Briscoe earned his first sprint car win at Paragon Speedway, marking the end of NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon’s reign as the youngest driver to win in a 410 sprint car. From there, Briscoe blazed a path of his own in the stock car world, dominating his first season in the ARCA Menards Series to become the 2016 champion, then earning his first NASCAR Truck Series win in 2017 in his 23rd start.

But it was after a breakthrough 2020 season in the Xfinity Series that saw Briscoe visit victory lane nine times that he finally felt like he was overcoming the odds that always seemed to be stacked against him. Just six years after leaving home to pursue a dream, he found himself back in Indiana, sitting next to his idol as he and his family were told he’d be the next driver of the famed No. 14 Ford Mustang for SHR in the Cup Series. Last year, when the series returned to Indianapolis to compete on the road course for the first time, Briscoe was introduced as the pilot of the No. 14 in front of hundreds of friends, family members and residents of Mitchell who had turned up to see him race at his home track, and he made sure to put on a show for the hometown crowd.

Twenty-four races into his rookie season and determined to earn his first Cup Series win at Indianapolis a year ago, Briscoe qualified second, missing the pole by just .426 of a second, and took the lead on lap two of the race. He finished the first stage in ninth, but from there struggled with a series of flat-spotted tires and green-flag pit stops until a caution on lap 79 set up Briscoe to restart third for the first attempt at a green-white-checkered finish on lap 88. That run was halted by the second multicar incident in a 12-lap span, and Briscoe once again restarted third, behind leader Denny Hamlin, for the second attempt at a green-white-checkered finish. As Hamlin drove wide into turn one and cars bunched up on the restart, Briscoe slid off into the grass. He returned to the track right behind Hamlin and was vying for the lead when contact sent Hamlin’s No. 11 into a spin. Briscoe was subsequently served a penalty for his venture through the grass and making contact with the leader and was parked for the final lap of the race, resulting in a 26th-place finish.

Briscoe’s move for the lead might have ruffled feathers, but his composure when confronted by Hamlin following the race made many take notice of his commitment to carrying on the legacy of the No. 14. Stewart stood by, observing his driver’s tenacity with pride, a moment that Briscoe has noted as a turning point in his career. “Personally, I felt like I was doing my job,” he said. “I’m there to win. But, to have Tony tell me he was proud of me for standing up for myself, that made me realize I’m doing the right thing. He’s the guy I looked up to as a kid and the driver I always wanted to be. He knew who he was and didn’t let anyone push him around, and it’s time for me to do the same.”

Briscoe has been a standout on the 2.439-mile, 14-turn Indianapolis road course layout since his first outing there in 2020 during the NASCAR Xfinity Series’ inaugural race on the circuit. He started 12th in the 38-car field and took the lead for the first time on lap 24, eventually leading five times for a race-high 30 laps. Over the final two laps, the Hoosier had to battle road-course ace AJ Allmendinger, who took the lead from Briscoe on lap 59 and sent him to third after the SHR pilot overdrove a corner. But Briscoe set his sights on regaining the lead and repositioned himself at the front of the field with a powerful drive past second-place Austin Cindric and leader Allmendinger on the penultimate lap. Briscoe wheeled his Ford Mustang throughout the hallowed grounds of the Brickyard en route to victory, beating runner-up Justin Haley to the finish line by a 1.717-second margin. It was Briscoe’s fifth of nine wins in 2020.

It was three months later that Briscoe was announced as the next driver of the No. 14, and he completed the 2021 season having earned Cup Series Rookie of the Year honors. He once again drew attention when he began the 2022 season with a third-place finish in the Daytona 500, then scored his first Cup Series win in the fourth race of the season at Phoenix Raceway.

With 21 of 36 races complete this season, Briscoe has three top-fives and four top-10 finishes, a career-best for the 27-year-old who earned three top-10s in his rookie season. Briscoe is currently 16th in points and holds a spot in the 16-driver playoff field with five races remaining in the regular season.

Cole Custer:

Custer has one other start at the facility, when he drove to an impressive fifth-place finish in the 2020 Brickyard 400 on its iconic 2.5-mile oval. It was his first of two top-fives during his Cup Series Rookie of the Year campaign, which he followed up with a dramatic victory the following weekend at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta.

Sunday’s race will be Custer’s 13th road-course start in the Cup Series. He qualified 10th and finished 15th in the July 3 race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. He posted stout qualifying efforts at the previous two road-course races – third for the March 27 event at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas, and sixth for the June 12 race at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway – but late-race, multicar chaos foiled his bids for finishes deep inside the top-10 at both events. Custer’s best Cup Series finish on a road course was ninth in the October 2020 race on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval.

 

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

Check out the schemes we’re bringing to the Brickyard this week.

What Our Drivers are Saying:

Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4  GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

Last year’s road-course race at Indianapolis turned into a bumper-car race, particularly at the end when Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin traded bumps that sent them both off the track and into an animated post-race discussion on pit road. What’s OK and what’s not OK in road-course racing, because we saw similar bumping and banging earlier this year at COTA?
“Road-course racing in general has become rougher over the last decade just because of the stage racing and the double-file restarts and everything that comes with that. I wish we could implement our choose rule in some of these situations at places like that because I think it would make it even more entertaining. But road-course racing has just progressively gotten rougher, and now with the new car and not having to worry about caving in a fender or something, you can pretty much just lay it in there and see what happens.”

Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Mobil 1/GEARWRENCH for Stewart-Haas Racing:

You’re two positions behind the playoff cut line right now and 140 points out. What is the game plan for the next five races?
“Win. Fortunately, we’re 13th in the point standings so a win would put us in a good spot if we had more than 16 winners before the playoffs begin. There has been so much parity this year that you don’t know who’s going to be good each weekend. There are some guys that are better on road courses than others, but you look at Michigan, Richmond and Daytona as complete wild cards. We even had guys far back in the standings that have run top-three at road courses, too. Hopefully, this weekend is one we show a lot of speed. A lot can change in the next five weeks and we hope it doesn’t come down to a Hail Mary at Daytona.”

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

How are you feeling about returning to Indianapolis this weekend and running double duty?
“I’m excited. There’s a lot of pressure that I put on myself during Indy weekend. I want to go there and win both practice sessions, both qualifying sessions and both races and that’s kind of the mentality I start with weeks out because I know it’s something that is definitely attainable. When you go to Indy being an Indiana guy, you have pressure coming from everywhere. There are a lot of people, friends and just fans, that don’t get to see me race anywhere else that are from that area. So, I’m definitely excited to get there and pull double duty. It looks like the Xfinity race is going to have a lot of Cup guys, so it’ll be a good test for Sunday. I’m really looking forward to getting there and spending a week at home.”

Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

f you could have the keys to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a day, what would you do?
“I’d probably just go over and see all the trophies and all the history in the museum there. It’s one of the coolest things. They have some special stuff downstairs that I think would be really cool to see, all the historic stuff that they have there. Having the first (Cup Series) road-course race there last year was huge, it was historic, and it was a crazy race. Indy is obviously the most historic track maybe in the world, definitely in the United States, so I’m really looking forward to going back.”

MENTOR & MENTEE: HARNESSING EMOTIONS

Harnessing your emotions is an advantage. Tony Stewart and Chase Briscoe talk about staying in control when it matters on the latest episode Mentor & Mentee presented by Mahindra Tractors.