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CHASE BRISCOE – 2020 NXS Daytona I Race Advance

Event:  NASCAR Racing Experience 300 (Round 1 of 33)
Date:  Feb. 15, 2020
Location:  Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway
Layout:  2.5-mile oval

Chase Briscoe Notes of Interest

●  The NASCAR Racing Experience 300 at Daytona International Speedway is the first event on the 33-race NASCAR Xfinity Series schedule. It will mark Briscoe’s 51st career Xfinity Series start and his third at Daytona. His best finish is 12th, earned in last year’s season opener.

●  Briscoe has two other starts on Daytona’s 2.5-mile oval outside of the Xfinity Series. His first came in February 2016 when he finished fourth in the ARCA Series race. The second came in February 2017 when he finished third in the NASCAR Truck Series race.

●  Briscoe has three additional starts at Daytona, but they came on the 3.56-mile, 12 turn road course in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge race on the Friday before the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona. Briscoe’s best finish in the four-hour sports car race was fifth in 2019 with co-drivers Austin Cindric and Billy Johnson in a Ford Mustang GT4.

●  HighPoint, a leading IT infrastructure and solutions company, has partnered with Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) to become the team’s official IT solutions provider and a primary sponsor of its No. 98 Xfinity Series entry with Briscoe. HighPoint makes its NASCAR debut this weekend via the No. 98 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang that Briscoe will drive in the NASCAR Racing Experience 300.

●  The 2020 season marks Briscoe’s second fulltime season with SHR and the No. 98 team. This is also the first time in the 25-year-old racer’s career that he will be competing fulltime in one of NASCAR’s national series for consecutive seasons.

●  Adding another layer of continuity to Briscoe’s season is the return of crew chief Richard Boswell. The 36-year-old begins his fourth year with SHR and his second with Briscoe. Boswell’s father, Dickie Boswell, successfully campaigned a late model stock car out of their hometown of Friendship, Maryland. The elder Boswell ultimately competed in 57 Xfinity Series races spread over six seasons in the 1980s. Although he never made it to the elite NASCAR Cup Series, the senior Boswell totaled four top-five finishes in the stepping-stone division to Cup.

●  Briscoe won the 2019 rookie-of-the-year title in the Xfinity Series and will race for a championship in 2020. The Mitchell, Indiana-native is a two-time winner in the Xfinity Series and the 2016 ARCA Racing Series champion. Briscoe finished fifth in the Xfinity Series championship standings last year, narrowly missing out on advancing to the Championship 4 and competing for the series title.

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 98 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang

This is the first time in your career where you’re running back-to-back, fulltime seasons in the same series with the same team. How does that help your confidence going into this year?

“It’s huge. Whenever you go to the racetrack, you now know what the car should drive like and you know the kind of feeling you’re looking for. Last year, I didn’t really know what I was expecting to feel or what I needed to feel. Now, I have that experience of being able to say, ‘OK, this was too tight for the race,’ or ‘This is too loose for the race.’ We have a good starting point. Before, we were just trying to figure out where we needed to start off the weekend. Now, we just know. Hopefully, with that, we’ll have some good speed in our HighPoint.com Ford Mustang right out of the trailer.”

While you’re back with SHR for another season and you’re familiar with your crew chief and the way the organization performs, there have been some changes to the No. 98 team. What can we expect from the HighPoint.com team in 2020?

“The No. 98 HighPoint.com team is a bit different personnel-wise. We’ve got half of the No. 98 team from last year and half of the No. 00 team from last year. There was a learning curve at the beginning of last season that I had to work through and overcome, but the second half of the season we were really good. So, I think the expectation for the start of the season is that we pick up where we left off. We were so close to going to victory lane a couple of times toward the end of last year, and I feel like we can definitely be one of the teams to beat every week.”

Is the ultimate goal for this season a championship?

“I think we need to go win eight to 10 races. Obviously, with the current championship format, you can be the best car all year long and get to Phoenix and have a bad day, and you don’t win the championship. I think we definitely need to be in that championship final four, and winning eight to 10 races will certainly do that. Ultimately, the championship is the goal, but I don’t think it necessarily defines if you had a good season or not. I think if we go win those 10 races – that’s almost a third of the season. Anything can happen in the Championship 4, so it’s hard to really say it’s a failure if you don’t win the championship.”

In the season-opener at Daytona, you’ve got a new partner in HighPoint, a leading IT infrastructure and solutions company. NASCAR today is far more technology-driven than it was years ago. How important is it to now be partnered with an IT company and what does HighPoint bring to the table for the No. 98 team?

“It’s a big deal to be aligned with HighPoint. Technology within the sport has come such a long way in the last few years, so to be involved with a company that is at the top of its game is huge for us. Their support goes toward making the racecar faster, finding speed in the racecar, and, truthfully, at the track on the weekends. It makes our work so much easier if we can have the right technology and IT support while we’re working out of the garage. It goes without saying that I’m looking forward to getting HighPoint in victory lane. What they bring to the table is every bit as important as what Ford Performance and Roush Yates Engines brings. Every team is trying to find that last little bit, and any time you can have an advantage – be it in horsepower or getting and analyzing data more quickly – you’re tough to beat.”