With one-fourth of the 2024 NASCAR Cup season in the books, Chase Briscoe is making a solid argument for Most Improved Driver.
While some might point to another Chase—as in Elliott, who won at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday following a 42-race drought–Briscoe arguably has endured a steeper hill to climb behind the wheel of the No. 14 Ford at Stewart-Haas Racing.
After a season that Briscoe would just as soon write off, the third-generation racer has scored consecutive top-10 finishes and qualified fifth in his last two starts.
“We had a really good Rush Truck Centers Ford,” Briscoe said after finishing sixth in Fort Worth. “Just proud of everybody at Stewart-Haas. Truthfully, the mile-and-a-halves have been somewhere we dread going. But over the last year—and this year—we’ve been really, really good.
“It was just a super-solid day, qualifying fifth, finishing fifth in both stages. We played the strategy perfect. We were going to come out with the lead there, then Bubba (Wallace) spun out in front of me (at the start of the final stage), then I had to go all the way to the back.
“We got a little bit lucky with cautions falling at the right time, and we were able to get some of our track position back. Solid day for us. Great points day—one that shows sixth on the score sheet—but we were way better than that.”
Briscoe had to elevate his game following the departure of Kevin Harvick from Stewart-Haas Racing. And those were huge racing shoes to fill. After Harvick arrived at SHR in 2014, he won the Cup championship in that same season. Over the next decade, he would amass 37 of his 60 victories—more than most drivers win throughout an entire career.
At 29, and in just his fourth full season on NASCAR’s top tour, could Briscoe—SHR’s senior Cup driver—provide the necessary leadership to his teammates as management attempted to right a ship that had veered off course?
Despite Harvick’s immense talent, he won just two races in his final three seasons with SHR—one more than Briscoe. In his final Cup season, Harvick posted six top fives and 14 top 10s, his thinnest results since 2012. He still topped the four Stewart-Haas drivers’ stats.
In Briscoe’s defense, the No. 14 team was levied an L3-level penalty for using unapproved parts in the 2023 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The third-generation racer lost 125 driver points and 25 playoff points through no fault of his own. Briscoe never recovered.
SHR reunited Briscoe with his Xfinity Series crew chief Richard Boswell 17 races into 2023. The pair had enjoyed success in Xfinity. Together, they won seven races and nearly claimed the 2020 NXS title. But Boswell had never been a Cup crew chief, and Briscoe’s points deficit was insurmountable. So the pair used last year as a building season and focused on 2024.
The effort has paid off. In the first nine races, Briscoe has earned four top-10 finishes—the earliest in a season the driver has tallied that result.
“We’ve had a really good start to our season,” Briscoe said. “We need to execute. That’s the difference between sixth and second. We just need to clean up a few things up and we’ll be there battling for the win.”
Briscoe has climbed to 12th in the Cup standings—a dramatic jump from finishing 30th in the 2023 points. The Mitchell, Ind.-native believes his time in a dirt car keeps him sharp. Last weekend, he raced with the High Limits Racing series at Texas and barely missed the feature. This weekend, he’ll compete in a sprint car at the Talladega Short Track.
“One thing I’ve talked to Boswell a lot is anytime I can go run the sprint car, it makes the Cup car feel like slow motion,” Briscoe said. “This is the slowest Texas has ever felt to me and it’s because I ran the sprint car this weekend.
“I’m excited to do more sprint car racing coming up and hopefully it will continue to translate.”
Although it will be unlikely to slow down the pace at Talladega Superspeedway, Briscoe feels comfortable with the direction his team is moving.
“Just really proud of the team and where we’re at from a speed standpoint,” Briscoe said. “We’ve been one of the top Fords week in and week out. That’s what we’ve been striving to do—and we’ve been doing that a lot lately. So proud of that.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
