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CHASE BRISCOE – 2020 NXS Phoenix I Race Advance

Event:  LS Tractor 200 (Round 4 of 33)
Date:  March 7, 2020
Location:  Phoenix Raceway
Layout:  1-mile oval

Chase Briscoe Notes of Interest

 

●  The LS Tractor 200 at Phoenix Raceway is the fourth event on the 33-race NASCAR Xfinity Series schedule. It will mark Briscoe’s 54th career Xfinity Series start and his third at Phoenix.

●  Briscoe comes into Phoenix second in the championship standings, just 10 points behind series leader Harrison Burton despite a 19th-place finish in last Saturday’s Production Alliance Group 300 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. In that race, Briscoe led three times for 16 laps and earned 16 stage points before a late-race spin while running second took him out of contention. The points earned in Fontana combined with those from Briscoe’s win Feb. 23 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and his fifth-place finish in the season-opener at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway have kept the 25-year-old racer from Mitchell, Indiana, near the top of the standings.

●  Briscoe has two Xfinity Series starts at Phoenix, both coming in 2019 and each resulting in top-10 finishes. His best Xfinity Series result at the 1-mile track was a sixth-place drive last March. And in the series’ most recent visit to the track in November, Briscoe started third and led 14 laps before finishing eighth.

●  Briscoe also has a NASCAR Truck Series start at Phoenix. In November 2017, Briscoe started eighth and finished fourth in his Ford F-150, securing his 13th career top-10. The result served as a prelude to Briscoe’s talent, as he won his first career Truck Series race the very next week in the Ford EcoBoost 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

●  Prior to his only Truck Series start at Phoenix, Briscoe ran a NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at the track in November 2013.

●  Ford Performance Racing School returns to Briscoe’s No. 98 Ford Mustang as the primary sponsor for Phoenix. The last outing for the white-and-blue Mustang came two weeks ago at Las Vegas where Briscoe led five times for a race-high 89 laps en route to his first win of the season and the third of his career. Ford Performance Racing School is the only school to wear the Ford oval, and Ford is the only full-line vehicle manufacturer to offer product-focused experiential driving programs exclusively to the owners of its complete line of performance vehicles, from cars to trucks to SUVs.

●  The No. 98 Ford Performance Racing School Ford Mustang carries a lineage to Carroll Shelby, an automotive jack-of-all-trades who raced and built performance cars. Shelby won the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans as a driver and founded Shelby American in 1962. There, he took British AC roadsters and fitted them with Ford engines, creating the Shelby Cobra. That relationship with Ford led Shelby to develop the Ford GT40 and win Le Mans in back-to-back seasons as a constructor (1966 and 1967). Ford asked Shelby to take its new Mustang racing in 1965, and he promptly made it a champion. Today, the Shelby name is synonymous with the Ford Mustang, and Shelby’s iconic No. 98 – which he originally raced and then used during his time as a racing constructor – adorns Briscoe’s No. 98 Ford Mustang. In fact, the grille of the No. 98 Ford Performance Racing School Ford Mustang features the iconic Shelby Cobra badge.

CHASE BRISCOE, Driver of the No. 98 Ford Performance Racing School Ford Mustang:

 

Phoenix is an important stop on the road to the Xfinity Series championship, as the season finale will take place at the track in November. With a win and a playoff berth already in your possession, how do you use this March visit to Phoenix to prepare for the championship race in November?

“Phoenix this year has more significance than it’s had in the past with it now holding the championship race. Truthfully, I feel like it’s probably my worst track on the schedule. The first race is definitely one that we’re going to need to go out there and learn as much as we can. Fortunately, Kyle Busch is running that race, so I’m going to put my Ford Performance Racing School Mustang behind him in every practice session and just try to learn. I feel like I don’t really understand how to get around there properly, and Kyle’s one of the best ones out there. I’m just going to try to learn from him, if I can. Hopefully, we can hit on something, because it is such an important race now with the championship being decided there at the end of the year.”

At Phoenix, you take the green flag almost in the middle of the tri-oval, which results in some very entertaining restarts. Why are restarts at Phoenix so much more dramatic than at other tracks on the Xfinity Series schedule?

“Restarts at Phoenix are definitely different than any other restart we have all year. It’s probably the only racetrack where you might hear “six-wide” getting into turn one, so the restarts are definitely intense there. You have a lot of options when you head down into turn one because you can run down on the flat by the inside wall, and when they added the traction compound last year, you could run right up by the fence. Phoenix is a place where you can win the race or lose the race on restarts, because once we get going, it’s hard to pass. Restarts are key, and if we can get up front and stay out of trouble on the restarts, we should have a good shot at picking up another win for Ford Performance Racing School.”