Chase Briscoe hopes to get car clicking at Kansas Speedway

KANSAS CITY, Ks. — Coming off a couple of unhealthy finishes for the No.14 Mahindra Tractors/SHR Racing Mustang, Mitchell's Chase Briscoe will try to regain his edge on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit in the AdventHealth 400 Sunday at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City.

The 13th race on the 2022 schedule will be 267 laps, broken into stages of 80, 85 and 102 laps, for 400 miles over the 1.5-mile asphalt oval. FS1 will televise the event, while MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio has the broadcast.

Back in Rush Truck/Cummins colors

Coming off last week's 20th place at Darlington, a 13th at Dover the week before, and a DNF for 37th at Talladega, Briscoe has slipped to 13th in the point standings, 166 out of first, and he hopes to get back to his top-10 ways in the midwest.

Perhaps a change in colors will coincide with a strong finish as the 14 team switches ack to the Rush Truck Centers/Cummins paint scheme on the Ford Mustang this week. That, coupled with his natural optimism and past experiences at Kansas Speedway, has Briscoe stoked for the weekend.

“I’m excited to get to Kansas," he said. "I think we’ve shown a lot of improvement on the mile-and-a-halves this year and we’ve definitely had speed. If we can put everything together and get a good starting spot I think we should be able to turn things around.

"The last few weeks haven’t been the best but we’ve got a good group of guys who don’t give up and I know we’re capable of more. We just need everything to go right to put ourselves in position for another win.”

Kansas kind to Briscoe

Briscoe racked up a pair of top-20 finishes in last year’s Cup Series races at Kansas with a best finish of 19th in the October event. Before he arrived in the Cup Series, Briscoe scored several strong runs at the 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway in NASCAR’s Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series.

Among his four Xfinity Series starts there, he has a pair of top-three finishes, including a win in the opening race of the Round of 8 in the 2020 playoffs. He also placed fifth in his lone NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start at Kansas.

Kansas is also the site of the last of Briscoe’s six ARCA Menards Series victories in 2016, which propelled him to the series championship. He totaled 14 top-fives and 18 top-10s in 20 ARCA races that year. In the October 2016 Kansas 150, Briscoe started from the pole and led twice for a race-high 67 laps to secure the victory by 1.464 seconds over Austin Cindric.

“It helps to know I have been successful at Kansas, but the Cup Series is a whole different level of competition," Briscoe stated. "Now, I got the win earlier this year and we’ve been up front more in these first few races than in all of last season, so I think mentally I’m more prepared for what’s coming than I was last year.

"We can’t really compare what we saw last year to what is coming because of the new car. I’m used to adapting, that’s something you have to do a lot in dirt racing, and we’ve had to do it a lot with this new car. Once we get on track for practice and see what we’ve got I think I’ll be better able to judge what I need to be comfortable and then I can start thinking about how I can use what I know about Kansas to run my best race.”

Special pride carrying Cummins

Haulers from Rush Truck Centers carry all of the SHR cars to the track each week,  but Briscoe takes a special pride on the occasions he gets to carry the Cummins colors on his car.

The company that's best known for the manufacture of diesel truck engines is based in Columbus, Indiana, the hometown of team co-owner Tony Stewart. Cummins is a corporation of complementary business segments that design, manufacture, distribute and service a broad portfolio of power solutions.

Since its founding in 1919, Cummins now employs approximately 61,600 people and serves customers in about 190 countries and territories through a network of some 8,000 wholly owned and independent dealer and distributor locations.

Another Late Model run

Before heading to Kansas, Briscoe will climb behind the wheel of a Kent Robinson Racing super late model at the Dirt Track at Charlotte to compete in The Colossal 100 on Wednesday and Thursday, May 11 and 12.

The Charlotte events are the third stop on the Chase’n Dirt Tour, a schedule of dirt racing events that Briscoe will run through July. In addition to Super Late Models, the third-generation dirt racer will compete in 360 Sprint car, 410 Sprint car, Micro Sprint, and Midget events leading up to the start of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.

Briscoe's first try in a dirt Super Late Model came on Wednesday, April 27 at Brownstown Speedway. It didn't go as well as hoped as he adjusts to one of the few divisions in which he had no previous experience.

A slow qualifying run left him back in the pack for his heat run, and a car spun in front him, leaving him nowhere to go. He made contact that knocked him out of the rest of the program.

"I have a lot to learn about driving these Late Models," Briscoe said at the time. "This didn't go the way we wanted, that's for sure, and the one thing I needed, laps, I didn't get. But we'll keep after it, keep learning, and we'll get better."

Contact Times-Mail Sports Writer Jeff Bartlett at jeffb@tmnews.com, or on Twitter @jeffbtmnews.