The evolution of Chase Briscoe’s superspeedway racing

LINCOLN, Ala. – This past weekend, Chase Briscoe earned his first superspeedway race victory in any national touring NASCAR series with his win at Talladega Superspeedway.

The win simultaneously locked Briscoe into his first Championship 4 appearance in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Prior to Sunday, Briscoe’s highest finish at a drafting-style track in Cup — Atlanta, Daytona or Talladega — was third in the 2022 Daytona 500.

For Briscoe, he said he has gone through “different phases of superspeedway racing” over the years.

“When I first started in the ARCA Series, I was trying not to crash,” Briscoe said to The Racing Experts. “I would ride around and hoped when they crashed, I missed it. Whenever I finished, I finished.

“I got to the Xfinity Series and talked to Dale Jr. He was like, ‘Man, you just got to be the most aggressive guy on the racetrack.’

Briscoe said he went through an “extremely aggressive” phase to not being “aggressive enough.” But now, he believes is has morphed into a balance.

“(Sunday), I thought was the best superspeedway race I ran, outside of the speeding penalty,” Briscoe said. “Just putting my car in places, making the right decisions. A lot of that comes down to just the team and their prep work, my spotter, Drew, even the circumstances kind of playing out at the right time.

“Yeah, I think you have to be aggressive to win these races. There’s a reason the same guys are typically up front. It’s because they put themselves there. If you’re just riding around, you might get lucky one out of a hundred.

“The guys that are typically up front are typically the most aggressive guys. It’s a matter of that fine line of too aggressive or not aggressive enough.”

For Briscoe, winning Stage 1 stuck the most out to him about his Talladega raceday

“I thought that was the best I’ve done controlling the lead,” said Briscoe, who led 16 laps. “A lot of the time I’ve been able to lead laps at superspeedways, but I’ve made myself get shuffled out and don’t do a good job of managing the gap, whatnot.

“At the end of that stage I thought that was the best I’d ever done before. Yeah, that was honestly the biggest takeaway.”