Information By: MIKE ARNING / STEWART-HAAS RACING – KANNAPOLIS, NC
CHASE BRISCOE
Iowa Advance
No. 14 Mahindra USA 30 Years Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Event Overview
● Event: Iowa Corn 350 powered by Ethanol (Round 17 of 36)
● Time/Date: 7 p.m. EDT on Sunday, June 16
● Location: Iowa Speedway in Newton
● Layout: .875-mile oval
● Laps/Miles: 350 laps/306.25 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 70 laps / Stage 2: 140 laps / Final Stage: 140 laps
● TV/Radio: USA / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Notes of Interest
● After a trip to the West Coast this past weekend at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to America’s Heartland for its inaugural race this Sunday at Iowa Speedway in Newton. While the track is new to the Cup Series, it is not new to NASCAR. The .875-mile oval located less than 40 miles east of the capital city of Des Moines played host to the NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series from 2009 through 2019, holding a total of 33 races (20 Xfinity Series races and 13 Truck Series races). NASCAR has been absent from Iowa since 2020, with this year providing a welcome return to a track many in the industry have come to love. The D-shaped oval was designed by NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace, and its similarity to the .75-mile Richmond (Va.) Raceway is no coincidence. Wallace claimed Richmond as one of his favorite tracks, and when he joined Iowa’s design team in 2003, Wallace used Richmond as his baseline. Iowa features variable banking, with the turns banked between 12-14 degrees, the frontstretch at 10 degrees and the backstretch at 4 degrees. Construction of Iowa began on June 21, 2005 and the facility made its public debut on Sept. 15, 2006 with a Hooters Pro Cup Series race during which driver Woody Howard became the track’s first victor. ARCA Menards Series races followed in 2006 and the IndyCar Series joined Iowa’s lineup in 2007.
● Despite the NASCAR Cup Series having never run at Iowa Speedway, Chase Briscoe is a veteran of the track. The driver of the No. 14 Mahindra USA 30 Years Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Stewart-Haas Racing has made five starts at Iowa across the NASCAR Xfinity Series (three), NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (one) and ARCA Menards Series (one). He has never finished outside the top-10 and has an average finish of 5.2, a number buoyed by two victories – July 9, 2016 in ARCA and July 27, 2019 in Xfinity.
● Briscoe dominated in his 2016 ARCA Menards Series win at Iowa. The native of Mitchell, Indiana qualified fifth and led twice for 63 laps. When Briscoe took the lead from Kyle Weatherman on lap 91, the 150-lap race was effectively over as Briscoe never relinquished the point, driving to a 2.484-second margin of victory over runner-up Kyle Benjamin.
● Briscoe’s second and most recent win at Iowa was a bit more nuanced. Despite qualifying second for the 2019 Xfinity Series race, Briscoe didn’t take the lead until lap 244 of the 250-lap race. But those final seven laps were the only ones that mattered as Briscoe outran Christopher Bell, who had led four times for a race-high 234 laps, to take the victory by 1.069 seconds. It was the last Xfinity Series race at Iowa and the top-five finishers – Briscoe, Bell, John Hunter Nemechek, Noah Gragson and Tyler Reddick – are now all fulltime NASCAR Cup Series drivers who will compete in Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 powered by Ethanol.
● Mahindra Ag North America is a proud sponsor of Briscoe and Stewart-Haas, and the No. 14 Ford Mustang Dark Horse Briscoe will drive this weekend at Iowa highlights an impressive milestone for Mahindra – 30 years of selling tractors in the United States. Houston-based Mahindra Ag North America is part of Mahindra Group’s Automotive and Farm Sector, the No. 1-selling farm tractor company in the world, based on volumes across all company brands. Mahindra offers a range of tractor models from 20-75 horsepower, implements, and the ROXOR heavy-duty UTV. Mahindra farm equipment is engineered to be easy to operate by first-time tractor or side-by-side owners and heavy duty to tackle the tough jobs of rural living, farming and ranching. Steel-framed Mahindra Tractors and side-by-sides are ideal for customers who demand performance, reliability and comfort. Mahindra dealers are independent, family-owned businesses located throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Mahindra USA 30 Years Ford Mustang Dark Horse
It seems like everyone is genuinely excited to race at Iowa this year. Why is that?
“It’s my favorite pavement track that I’ve ever raced on. I’m super excited. It’s just an awesome racetrack. It’s rough and it’s worn out. They repaved some of it, which stinks, but nobody’s run there for a couple of years, and every time I’ve ever been there, it’s been an unbelievable race. You can just literally go wherever on the racetrack. I think it’ll be the perfect storm for our cars. I feel like the NextGen car really performs well on intermediates and kind of struggles on short tracks, but Iowa is like the intermediate of short tracks. And then you throw in the fact that it’s really slick and worn out, there should be tire wear. I’m just really, really excited to go there.”
In your last race at Iowa, you won. In fact, in three career NASCAR Xfinity Series races at Iowa, you’ve never finished outside the top-10. What made you so good there?
“Iowa is the one track that from the get-go – I went there in ARCA and won, Truck Series I ran second almost the whole race and I should’ve won, the Xfinity car I was always up front and I was able to win in it, too. Honestly, as crazy as it sounds, on iRacing Iowa was always the one track that me and my buddies would all run because you could throw slide jobs, and before iRacing had dirt, that was the one track we felt like kind of raced like a dirt track because you’d slide around, and you could throw slide jobs on people. We would run so many laps around that racetrack between me and Christopher Bell and Logan Seavey and just all these guys you obviously hear of now. I had probably more laps around that track than any other on iRacing. When I finally got to go there in real life, I drove it just like I did on iRacing and it was fast. I need to get back on there and run some laps because it’s been a couple of years, now. It’s just a place that I fell in love with literally from the first lap I ran there, and I always enjoyed going there. It always helps when you run well every time you’ve been there, too. Yeah, I’m pretty jacked up about going there with the Cup car.”
We’ve talked about how different the NextGen cars are to the Xfinity Series cars, but does that familiarity with Iowa and your success there help for the inaugural Cup race at Iowa?
“I think so. The Cup car’s certainly going to drive totally different than anything I’ve ever run there before. But that track has so much character. It’s been since 2019 that I’ve raced there, so you know it’s changed a lot since then. The holes that were big then are probably going to be just bigger now, and how you manipulate your car through those holes is super, super important. And the NextGen drives totally different through bumps and stuff, so there’s going to be a lot of learning to do. But I still think it’s going to be one of those tracks where, if you understand your car placement and just how to run the top there, it’s going to be really big for you. It’s going to be a clean slate for everybody. Nobody’s going to have a lot of experience there, at least in the last few years, so it’s going to be fun to go there and try to figure it out together.”
How helpful is the simulator in getting your mind to understand how Iowa drives in a Cup car compared to what you experienced there in ARCA, Trucks and Xfinity back in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019?
“It’s good. It gives you a general idea of what to expect, and you at least kind of know what you’re getting into before you get into it. It’s never 100 percent, but I think the closer and the more we use it, the better it gets. There are some tracks that are better than others, but it’s hard when you haven’t been to a place before. But I think it just gives you a general idea. And even from just a visual standpoint, I haven’t been there since 2019, there are going to be signs and markers that are going to be different, so that’s where I think the sim will come into play.”
You get a rare Friday practice session at Iowa. How helpful will that real-world track time be for you?
“It’ll be nice to have a full practice session. You can learn a lot. We only have a few a year, and those are the only times that we’re actually allowed to make changes on the car at the racetrack that are more than just your little, tiny adjustments. So as a team, you almost go there just trying to make your program better as a whole for down the road, so you can really try some stuff that you’re really wanting to try. And you might sacrifice a practice session at a new racetrack just trying to learn stuff for the rest of the year. It’s always nice when you have those long practice sessions. You can tune your car in and just try some stuff that you haven’t been able to try before.”
Does Iowa have some tendencies of Richmond or other tracks where you’ve competed?
“I feel like it’s its own thing. Iowa’s always been my best racetrack, and I feel like Richmond’s always been my worst. I remember the first time I went to Richmond and felt like it was just a flat Iowa, and I was not very good. They’re definitely similar from a shape standpoint, but they race totally, totally different. I don’t feel like there’s much that compares.”
When I say “Iowa,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind, other than the racetrack?
“Other than the racetrack? I think of Knoxville, which is a different racetrack. Just sprint car racing, you know how big sprint-car racing is in that area, Knoxville is 20, 30 minutes away, you have the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame. Outside of that, I think of corn fields. The racetrack is literally in a corn field.”
When we race at Iowa, Mahindra will be celebrating 30 years of selling its tractors in the United States. Iowa is farm country, and it seems to be your country, we well. Are you ready to deliver for Mahindra in NASCAR’s return to Iowa?
“It would be awesome, and I feel like it’s kind of a perfect storm. It’s my favorite racetrack, it’s 30 years for Mahindra selling in the U.S., and you’re literally in the middle of farm and tractor country. It’d be perfect, right? I think there’s a real opportunity to do it, and I feel like there’s no better place to do it than in the Heartland of America where there are probably more tractors in that state than any other state in America. It’d be awesome to win it right there, kind of fly the flag for Mahindra right there in the heart of where there’s a ton of tractor competition.”
You’ve gone from being a guy who probably didn’t know a whole lot about tractors to where you now have a fleet of Mahindra Tractors on your property. What have you been doing since you’ve become a homeowner in rural North Carolina?
“I knew how to drive a tractor, but when I first moved down here, I didn’t have any land. And then two years ago I was able to buy a place with 17 acres and I instantly needed a tractor, so it kind of worked out being with Mahindra. I went from a 20-horsepower to a 50-horsepower back down to a 20-horsepower, and I definitely put a lot of hours on them. My son is just in love with riding the tractor. He wants to do it every single day, so if I’m not moving dirt or trying to fix my driveway or tearing down trees or just picking up limbs, he’s asking to get on the tractor. That’s the one thing, with 17 acres, there are trees falling all the time, so you’re always trying to pick something up, move it and clear something. When I’m not doing that, my son just wants to ride around and drive it and lift the bucket up and down, so it’s been nice for us just to have 20, 30 minutes every day of just going out there and just me and him and watching him kind of enjoying it and learning. It’s definitely been nice to have a partner like Mahindra where, not only are they family off the racetrack, but their product is honestly bringing our family closer.”
Mahindra tailors its equipment for first-time tractor buyers. That was you. How intuitive was their equipment to where you could get up to speed relatively quickly?
“I don’t have a ton of experience with other brands, but I felt like, for me, I hadn’t driven a tractor since I was probably 11, 12 years old with my grandpa, so 15 years ago. But I got on and it was pretty simple. You literally turn the key, you put the thing in gear, push the pedal down and it’s going, and the bucket’s pretty self-explanatory – you pull it back and it goes up, you push it and it goes down, and then you tilt it going left or right. So there’s not a whole lot of things that you can do to mess up on it. Now being in the tractor space, I’ve been able to see other brands and other things and it just looks more complicated. The Mahindras are super simple and, especially for the first-time tractor buyer, it makes things a lot easier just because it doesn’t overcomplicate things. You can’t hurt them, that’s for sure.”