Indiana native Chase Briscoe off Justin Haley to win Saturday’s inaugural Pennzoil 150 NASCAR Xfinity Series race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. Briscoe went three-wide with then-leader A.J. Allmendinger and Austin Cindric with two laps remaining and took the lead to capture his fifth win of the season.
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“Everybody knows that I grew up and my hero in racing was Tony Stewart. To get to drive for him and watch him win the Brickyard, that was always his signature thing and I just wanted to do it. Obviously, it is not the same prestige as winning on the oval but you still won at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.” Briscoe said.
Briscoe led 30 of 62 laps in the No. 98 Highpoint.com Ford after starting 12th and captured NASCAR’s first race on the 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course.
“Growing up and coming here all the time, it’s unbelievable to think I just won here.” Briscoe said. “It doesn’t matter if you are racing on the oval, the road course, the dirt track or even the parking lot, it is special when you win here.”
The team climbed the fence after winning, by crew chief Greg Zippadelli did not.
“No, I would have but I am too old to run down there with those kids anymore. I walked down and they were coming back down when I got there. I did it before. It is a really cool win, a great place. I am glad I could be a small part of him experiencing that. I know he was pretty pumped up to come here being from Indiana and a lot of his heroes race here and grew up around here.” Zippadelli said.
Briscoe now leads in the series point standings over Noah Gragson by 21 points and a 55-point lead over third-ranked driver Ross Chastain.
Justin Haley finished second, Noah Gragson third, AJ Allmendinger fourth and Austin Cindric finished fifth.
Rounding out the top-10 finishers were Ross Chastain, Justin Allgaier, Alex Labbe, Michael Annett and Preston Pardus.
Cindric scored his fourth stage win of the 2020 NASCAR Xfinity Series season on the way to a claiming fifth-place finish. The driver of the No. 22 Menards/Richmond Ford Mustang led 21 laps and racked up his seventh top-five finish of the season. He sits fourth in the NASCAR Xfinity Series driver standings, 61 markers behind leader Briscoe.
“Obviously we were racing really hard for the win and the thing about these cars is you have to be all the way on the inside to make a move and I probably didn’t quite commit to the areas where I could have used a bit more of my car. I feel like that as my missed opportunity. I am not sure how many more opportunities I had other than the ones that I knew I could take. I feel like the opportunity was there. The 98 drove off the race track and the seas kind of parted for me and AJ was driving extremely defensive and I feel like that is why I was able to stay with him but I just couldn’t quite seal the deal.” Cindric said.
The series heads to Kentucky Speedway on Thursday July 9 for the Shady Rays 200, 134 laps / 200 miles at 7:30 PM ET. On FS1.
