By Seth Eggert, Staff Writer
Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe pulled off an unbelievable comeback for NASCAR’s modern era at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Briscoe spent under five laps on the lead lap in his No. 98 Ford Performance Racing School Ford Mustang. Those laps were all that he needed to climb into the top-10 in a two-lap dash to the finish in the Hooters 250. Briscoe used his speed to blast by Jeremy Clements, J.J. Yeley, Riley Herbst and others to finish seventh.
“It was definitely a frustrating day, but we can’t hang our heads,” explained Briscoe. “We had another really good, fast race car and we just made a silly mistake this week and forgot something. Last week, I made a silly mistake on pit road, so it all evens out.
“The positive is that we had a really fast race car. In fact, I felt like we were the fastest car by quite a bit. The good thing is we get another chance at it tomorrow and hopefully we can put it all together and not make any mistakes and get another win.”
The trouble started prior to the start of the race, Briscoe’s No. 98 lost lead spacers. As the spacers fell out at different areas of the track, the NASCAR Xfinity Series officials delayed the green. The also brought Briscoe’s car down pit road to have the Richard Boswell-led team to make repairs.
Those repairs cost Briscoe six laps. Once back on track, he blew by the leaders earn one lap back. Boswell pitted the No. 98 under the first caution, giving Briscoe an opportunity to earn another lap back. The 25-year-old then reclaimed a second lap by taking the wave around under the second caution.
Briscoe took back a third lap by the end of stage three. It wasn’t until the end of the second stage that he earned the free pass. He then moved to be just one lap behind the leaders. Boswell and Briscoe attempted to use strategy to move back onto the lead lap, but ultimately had to settle for the wave around during the final caution.
“I think we may have been seven laps down at first before we pulled out, but I knew that we were going to have good speed,” admitted Briscoe. “For the most part, everything kind of went our way, but we just had to get a little crazy on strategy. Boswell has always been really good about thinking outside the box and with the speed we had in the car we were able to take tires and restart with 20-lap old tires and still hold our own.
“If we would have got a caution before we did the green flag pit stop, then I feel like I could have still won the race and that would have been quite the story. Overall, having no practice is tough because you miss little things like that, but on the same side no practice and the amount of speed we’ve had each and every week is just a testament of how good our race cars are and how good of a team we have.”
The seventh-place finish is the seventh top-10 for Briscoe in 2020 and the 37th of his Xfinity career. The Ford Performance driver slipped from first to second in the points standings, 18-points behind Noah Gragson. Briscoe is locked into the Xfinity Series playoffs via his two victories.