By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Eerily similar to the last points race run at Dover Motor Speedway last July, Chase Briscoe was second to Denny Hamlin at the checkered flag.
And much like that race nearly one year ago, it was a back-and-forth fight in the closing laps that saw the Joe Gibbs Racing pair trade the lead and wrap the day 1-2.
For Briscoe unfortunately, he could not best his elder teammate again at the Delaware mile — and tires had a big part to play in it.
“Any time I would get the lead on a restart, I would just be so loose that I would burn my right-rear tire off,” Briscoe explained. “On the long run, I would just be hanging on.
“I almost needed to be second for those first 30-40 laps of a run. But if you can take the lead, you have to take it. I just needed a little bit of rear grip.”
Losing the lead with 30 laps to go, it was too little too late for the No. 19 in what turned out to be a marathon day across two 75-lap and a final 200-lap race to score the winner.
“I felt like I was running the Coke 600 a week early,” he joked. “It felt like a long race. It was definitely chaotic and I enjoyed it. It was fun because we would flip the field. We get that sometimes in a race when a caution comes out at a weird spot.
“All of us were racing up through there knowing what was at stake. And then the strategies obviously were all over the place with how the cautions fell.”
Dover stands as one of Briscoe’s favorites on the calendar and he would like to see a point race return.
“I wish this was a track where we had a point race because it is a really good track,” he said. “I felt the resin was unbelievable, we were able to move around all over the place.”