After the Rain, Chase Briscoe Finds New Confidence

It turned out to be quite the eventful weekend for Chase Briscoe.

After having his likely future plans accidentally leaked on Friday by Christopher Bell, Briscoe had his work cut out for him at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sunday. After qualifying was cancelled due to rain on Saturday, Briscoe started the day in 23rd position.

In his final year at Stewart-Haas Racing, which will shutter at the end of the year in its current form, Briscoe has struggled to find consistency. He entered the weekend outside the playoff conversation, below the cutoff for contention.

Leaving, he’s still below the cutoff but now very much in the conversation after using NASCAR’s weather woes to his advantage. After a two-hour, 19-minute rain delay, the race restarted on wet-weather tires once standing water was removed from the racing surface. 

Briscoe, whose background is in dirt sprint cars, shone under those conditions.

With wet-weather tires on the cars and the track surface damp to wet, New Hampshire’s racing surface opened up to multiple racing grooves, from the apron to the outside wall. Briscoe used a combination of good pit decisions before the rain and hard racing under the wet conditions to charge to second place after battling Josh Berry door-to-door on a final overtime restart.

Briscoe, who is likely to join Joe Gibbs Racing next year to replace the retiring Martin Truex Jr., said after the race that under normal circumstances, he didn’t have a top-five car. 

“(Bell) was really, really good all day long. For us to finish second (was) a good solid day with a 25th-place car. We were not very good.

“When the rain came, we were 60 points below the cut line, and now we’re 25 points below the cut line. We just needed a good day. Second is great. But even if we were just to remain in the top 10, that was going to be a good way to kind of get back and stop the bleeding. Hopefully we can just continue to build on this.”

This has been a difficult year for Briscoe. Even before the announcement that Stewart-Haas was closing, his team, like other Ford organizations, struggled with the new Dark Horse body. That seems to be changing for the better as Fords have shown marked improvement in recent weeks, but Sunday is Briscoe’s first finish better than 17th since he finished fifth at Darlington in May.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Briscoe said…