Chase Briscoe: “Our car was better than being 2.5 seconds a lap off the lead”
FONTANA, CALI. — Chase Briscoe finished 20th after various mechanical issues left him off the pace in Sunday’s Pala Casino 400 at Auto Club Speedway.
“Even if they would’ve wrecked a lot of them, we still would’ve finished where we did.”
Briscoe finished 33rd in the first stage after having some sort of engine issue, like there may have been a cylinder down.
“It sounded flat, like it didn’t want to run,” Briscoe described.
During the stage caution, Briscoe received the free pass. Then, he read the ECU codes, cycled the ECU, read the codes again and eventually brought the car to pit road.
The team worked under the hood and brought Briscoe back out. All of the moves helped him regain some power but they were still off and could only muster a 28th-place finish in the second stage and a 20th-place finish in the race.
“[After all the moves] it got a little better but we were still off, balance-wise. There are so many questions I have and if we would’ve had practice, we could’ve figured it out. Kevin [Harvick] was so good and we were similar to him, but we were so far off.”
Harvick finished 5th after leading twice for 5 laps Sunday. Briscoe only ran as high as 20th, his final finishing position.
Briscoe also finished 34th in the Daytona 500 after getting caught up in a late-race wreck. Two bad finishes is concerning, he believes.
“We’re already in a big hole points-wise, using our two mulligans so we want to turn it around big time,” Briscoe said.
In two weeks, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to Phoenix Raceway where Briscoe won last March.
