Information By: MIKE ARNING / STEWART-HAAS RACING – KANNAPOLIS, NC
CHASE BRISCOE
Atlanta Advance
No. 14 Mahindra Compact Tractors Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Event Overview
● Event: Atlanta 400 (Round 27 of 36)
● Time/Date: 3 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Sept. 8
● Location: Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia
● Layout: 1.54-mile oval
● Laps/Miles: 260 laps/400 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 60 laps / Stage 2: 100 laps / Final Stage: 100 laps
● TV/Radio: USA / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Notes of Interest
● The NASCAR Playoffs begin Sunday with the Atlanta 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia, and for the second time in his four-year NASCAR Cup Series career, Chase Briscoe is a part of it. Briscoe qualified for this year’s playoffs by scoring the equivalent of walk-off home run last Sunday night at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway when he won the Cook Out Southern 500. Briscoe came into the race 144 points outside of the top-16 cutoff to make the playoffs. His only shot to make the 16-driver playoff field was with a victory, and in Briscoe’s eighth career Darlington start, the 29-year-old from Mitchell, Indiana, delivered. After starting third, his best at Darlington, Briscoe was a top-five mainstay, leading four times for 29 laps, including the final 26 tours around the 1.366-mile oval after a daring three-wide pass for the lead on lap 342. And when a late-race caution bunched the field for a 16-lap dash to the finish, Briscoe fended off a hard-charging Kyle Busch, who was also in a must-win situation to make the playoffs, to take the victory by .361 of a second over Busch. It was Briscoe’s second career Cup Series win and it ended a 93-race winless streak, as Briscoe scored his first Cup Series win in just his 40th career start on March 13, 2022 at Phoenix Raceway. Now, for the final 10-race title run, Briscoe is 13th amongst the 16 playoff drivers.
● Briscoe’s Darlington win was a milestone for Stewart-Haas Racing as it was the organization’s 70th points-paying NASCAR Cup Series victory. It was the 104th overall win for the organization co-owned by NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart and Haas Automation founder Gene Haas. Stewart-Haas’ total win tally also includes six non-points-paying Cup Series wins, 27 NASCAR Xfinity Series wins, and one ARCA Menards Series West win.
● Atlanta Motor Speedway has been around since 1960, but the Atlanta track Briscoe and his NASCAR Cup Series brethren will compete on this Sunday is less than three years old. The 1.54-mile oval was reconfigured after the final race of the 2021 season. The banking was increased from 24 degrees to 28 degrees and the track was narrowed from 55-feet wide to 40-feet wide, and it was all covered in fresh asphalt. The goal of the reconstruction was to recreate the kind of pack-style racing seen at the behemoth, 2.5-mile Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway and the even bigger 2.66-mile Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. Drivers competed on the new layout for the first time in March 2022 and the Atlanta 400 will be the sixth Cup Series race on the revamped track.
● The Atlanta 400 will mark Briscoe’s eighth NASCAR Cup Series start at Atlanta. His first two starts came on the old configuration, where his best finish was 15th, earned in July 2021. Despite the new layout in 2022, Briscoe equaled that finish in the debut of “new Atlanta” in March, where the driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Compact Tractors Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Stewart-Haas Racing started from the pole and led five laps. Fifteenth remains his best career Cup Series result at Atlanta.
● Outside of the NASCAR Cup Series, Briscoe has four other Atlanta starts. He ran three NASCAR Xfinity Series races at the track, each on the old layout, and never finished outside of the top-15. His best result was ninth in June 2020. He made a lone NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start at Atlanta in March 2017 and finished 25th.
● Mahindra Ag North America is a proud sponsor of Briscoe and Stewart-Haas, and 2024 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.
● Mahindra Ag North America is using the Atlanta 400 to promote its newest line of sub-compact and compact tractors, which are designed with features to enhance operation for first-time buyers. Boasting comfort amenities like telematics, leather seats and USB charging ports, the Mahindra 1100 and 2100 models are designed around ease of use for acreage owners, farmers and ranchers, with features like a push-button PTO and side-by-side HST pedals. Other features include a hand throttle on the console, tilt and telescopic steering, implement quick raise and lower, and auto lift at three points while turning and backing. Every model in the 1100 and 2100 series is available in open station or cab configurations, with an HVAC system exclusive to the 2126. This line of compacts have compatible Mahindra attachments, including loaders, backhoes, mowers, snowblowers, post hole diggers and grapples. The loader on the 1100 series has a max lift of 770 pounds, while the 2100 has a max lift of 1,760 pounds.
Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Compact Tractors Ford Mustang Dark Horse
How much does racing at Atlanta emulate what you experienced two weeks ago at Daytona?
“It’s similar in a sense, but very different in the sense of just how fast things happen. The mental side of Atlanta is, by far, the hardest thing we do all year long. It’s a mile shorter, so while it’s very, very easy to run wide open the whole time when you go to Daytona or Talladega, at Atlanta your car is struggling just to even get close to that. There’s a lot more to the team side of things at Atlanta as far as getting the balance of the car right, and it’s just a challenge for us mentally with how fast things happen and how quickly you have to process things.”
Is competing at Atlanta mentally taxing?
“I think it’s the most mentally draining racetrack we have on the schedule. Daytona and Talladega have always been mentally draining, but you go to Atlanta and things happen four times the speed because you lose a mile with that racetrack. It’s an interesting track because it races like a superspeedway, but it’s still an intermediate. The corners didn’t change. The radius of the corners, all of that is still the same as we’ve always had, so it’s not like a Daytona or a Talladega where your car goes around there wide-open super easily. You’re manhandling the car at all times, so Atlanta is a very challenging racetrack and, by far, the most mentally draining with just how much your brain is trying to process and listen to your spotter. Actually applying what your spotter is saying is hard because things happen so fast there. It’s a tough one, for sure.”
Talk about your race earlier this year at Atlanta. Fast in qualifying. Fast in the race. Running top-five with 21 laps to go. A crash left you 31st, but that doesn’t really tell the whole story.
“Atlanta’s one of those races I wish I could have back. Our car was so good. We qualified well, we raced really, really well, and I was able to be extremely aggressive. I feel like my car handled better than anybody in the field. So, yeah, that’s a race I wish I could have back because the end-of-the-day result certainly didn’t reflect how good we were that day. It was just one of those situations where we got four-wide going into the corner and there was really only room for three cars, and I ended up being on the wrong end of it. But I’m excited to go back there. It’s a place where I felt like we kind of gave one away in a sense – maybe not gave one away, but we were going to be in the mix at the end, for sure, if we were still rolling. Hopefully, our car will be able to handle as good as it did there the first time, and if we can do that and be as aggressive as we were, I feel like it can be a good day for us.”
You first raced at Atlanta back in February. Seven months have passed and the weather is now a lot hotter and a lot more humid. How much does Atlanta change from late February to early September?
“I think your car is going to handle worse in the hotter temperatures. So from that side of things, how good our car handled earlier this year is encouraging. If it can continue to just be better than the field, that should make it easier for us to drive through the field. It’s hard to say, I think it will just get harder to run the car there wide open. Every time we’ve gone there, it’s gotten harder and harder to do that. That track’s been aging pretty quickly and the hotter temps are just going to make it that much more slick out there. I don’t know necessarily what to expect, but if I had to guess, that’s what going to happen.”
With your run at Atlanta earlier this year and a slicker track that plays into your dirt-track upbringing, what are your expectations for your return to Atlanta?
“Atlanta’s kind of unique because it is a superspeedway, so it’s not as comfortable to be loose as I would be at a Charlotte- or Darlington-type racetrack where it’s just easier to kind of slip and slide around. At Atlanta, you kind of want your car to be as stuck and comfortable as it can be because you have to be able to be aggressive and make moves and do the superspeedway-style blocks and maneuvers. That place is probably a little bit tougher. The encouraging thing for us is how well our car handled in the first race. Hopefully, that difference from the guys who didn’t have the handling will be a little bit bigger and our car will be able to adjust to the hotter weather, and if that happens, I definitely feel like we’ll be in the mix.”
When you get to Atlanta, it’s just 10 more races until the season is over. What do you want to accomplish in these last 10 races at Stewart-Haas?
“Everything we can do to try and win more races and compete for a championship. For sure, we want to go out with our heads held high. I’ve been in this same position with Brad Keselowski Racing (in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series) where we were going to shut down at the end of the year and we were able to go and literally win the last race of the season and I think that really put a stamp on things. It’s cool to be able to say, with all the circumstances you were in with all the chaos and everything, people trying to find another place to go, that they were still willing to put the work in and the effort to bring race-winning cars. Winning again would be pretty special, and that’s what we’re going to try to do.”