From a wreck on Saturday to a win on Sunday, Chase Briscoe capped off an up-and-down weekend at Dover International Speedway by winning the second Drydene 200 event on August 23 in a backup car and following a late battle with Ross Chastain. The victory was Briscoe’s sixth of the season, first since early July at Indianapolis and the eighth of his NASCAR Xfinity Series career.
The starting lineup was based on the results from Saturday’s first Xfinity race at Dover, where only the top-15 finishers were inverted. With that, Brett Moffitt, who finished 15th on Saturday, started on pole position and was joined on the front row with Brandon Brown.
Chase Briscoe started at the rear of the field after moving to a backup car along with Daniel Hemric due to a driver change. Anthony Alfredo, Jeffrey Earnhardt, Alex Labbe and Vinnie Miller also dropped to the rear of the field due to unapproved adjustments. Noah Gragson and Myatt Snider retained their starting spots for Sunday’s event, but both lost their pit stall selection for next week due to two pre-race technical failures.
When the green flag waved and the second Xfinity Dover race commenced, Moffitt jumped to an early advantage through Turns 1 and 2. Justin Haley moved up to second place followed by rookie Riley Herbst while Brown fell back to fourth place in front of Noah Gragson.
By the third lap, Justin Allgaier, coming off his first win of this season at Dover on Saturday and who started 15th, moved up to eighth place. Ryan Sieg, on the other hand, fell back to 12th place behind rookie Harrison Burton while Austin Cindric was scored in 10th place.
Following the first 10 laps, the first caution of the race flew due to an incident involving Earnhardt and Miller in the backstretch, where they made contact with one another and towards the outside wall before Miller made more contact against the Turn 3 outside wall. By then, Moffitt was still leading over Haley, Herbst, Gragson and Allgaier. Ross Chastain was in seventh place ahead of Cindric and Michael Annett while Burton was in 10th. Brandon Jones was in 14th, Chase Briscoe was in 16th and Alfredo, who rallied from power issues that forced him to start at the rear of the field, was in 20th ahead of Daniel Hemric.
Under caution, few like Timmy Hill, Stephen Leicht, Matt Mills and Korbin Forrister pitted.
When the race restarted around the Lap 15 mark, Moffitt retained the lead following a strong start. Haley and Herbst battled for second place while behind, Brown got loose underneath Gragson in Turn 3. Brown and Gragson were able to prevent their cars from spinning despite sliding sideways as they continued running inside the top 10.
Towards the front, Chastain took over second place followed by Herbst while Haley fell back to fourth in front of teammates Allgaier and Gragson. Meanwhile, Moffitt retained the lead through Lap 20 and when the competition caution flew.
Under caution, only a few that included Brandon Jones, Hemric, Josh Williams, Stephen Leicht, Kody Vanderwal and Matt Mills pitted while the rest remained on track. Prior to the restart, Burton was sent to the rear due to a choose cone violation.
When the race restarted on Lap 24, Moffitt and Chastain battled dead before Chastain emerged with the lead the following lap. Behind, Allgaier continued to muscle his way to the front after taking over third place from Herbst. In addition, Gragson passed Haley for fifth place while Cindric and Briscoe moved up to seventh and eighth. Hemric also emerged in the top 10 as he battled Brandon Brown for more.
Following Lap 30, Chastain was ahead by nearly a second over Moffitt and more than a second over Allgaier. Behind, Jones, racing on fresh tires, was in 18th. Five laps later, Chastain extended his advantage to more than a second over Moffit and nearly two seconds over Allgaier. Gragson moved back up into the top five while Haley, Briscoe, Cindric and Hemric battled for sixth place.
Another five laps later and with the laps in the first stage dwindling, Chastain continued to extend his advantage to more than two seconds over Allgaier and Moffitt. Proving he had a fast car throughout Saturday’s Xfinity Dover race and in the early stages of Sunday’s event, Chastain raced to his first stage victory of the season on Lap 45. Allgaier settled in second followed by Moffitt, Herbst and Gragson. Briscoe, Cindric, Haley, Hemric and Brown were scored in the top 10.
Under the stage break, the leaders pitted and Jones emerged with the lead following a two-tire pit stop. Behind, Allgaier beat Chastain to exit in second place, but the first on four fresh tires. Following the stops, however, Herbst was sent to the rear of the field due to an uncontrolled tire violation.
When the second stage started past the Lap 50 mark, Allgaier muscled ahead with the lead. Behind, Chastain and Briscoe made a three-wide move on Jones to move up followed by Cindric while Jones fell back to fifth place. In addition, Gragson took over seventh place from Hemric while Burton moved up to ninth ahead of Haley. Shortly after, Alfredo joined the battle as he battled Burton for a top-10 spot.
While the batting around the track among multiple competitors continued to ensue, Allgaier was ahead by two-tenths of a second over Chastain and with Briscoe and Cindric trailing closely behind the two leaders. By Lap 60, the top-four competitors were ahead by more than a second over fifth-place Jones and more than two seconds over sixth-place Gragson.
Past the Lap 60 mark, the caution returned due to an incident in Turn 2 involving Earnhardt and Herbst. Under caution, few that included Jeremy Clements, B.J. McLeod, Kody Vanderwal and Chad Finchum pitted while the rest remained on track.
On Lap 69, the race restarted and the battle for the lead ignited between Allgaier, Chastain, Briscoe and Cindric. The following lap, Briscoe moved up to second place and he grabbed the lead the next lap. While Briscoe led his first lap of the day, Chastain and Cindric battled for third place followed by Gragson while Hemric moved up to sixth place after passing Jones.
By Lap 80, Briscoe was ahead by six-tenths of a second over Allgaier while Chastain, Cindric and Gragson continued running inside the top five. Behind, Hemric and Jones were in sixth and seventh and Moffit was in eighth ahead of Haley and Burton. Alfredo was in 11th ahead of Brown and Michael Annet, Sieg was in 14th ahead of Snider and Herbst was in 16th.
For the final 10 laps of the second stage, Briscoe was able to power away from the field and claim his fifth stage of the season on Lap 90. Allgaier settled in second followed by Chastain, Cindric and Gragson. Hemric, Jones, Moffitt, Burton and Haley were scored in the top 10.
Under the stage break, the leaders pitted and Briscoe retained the lead after exiting pit road first following a four-tire stop followed by Cindric, Hemric, Chastain, Burton and Jones while Allgaier fell back to eighth place. The race went from bad to worse for Allgaier, who dropped to the rear of the field due to an uncontrolled tire violation. Labbe also dropped to the rear of the field due to crew member interference.
With nearly 100 laps remaining, the final stage started and Briscoe retained the lead following a strong start on the outside lane. Chastain moved up to second place over Cindric while Burton moved up to fourth place over Hemric. Gragson and Jones also joined the battle involving Burton and Hemric.
Three laps later and at the halfway mark on Lap 100, Briscoe was ahead by nearly a second over Chastain, who continued to run ahead of Cindric for the runner-up spot. Another 10 laps later and with 90 laps remaining, Briscoe was still leading by more than a second over Chastain and Cindric. Hemric and Burton settled in the top five ahead of Gragson, Annett, Jones, Herbst and Moffitt. Meanwhile, following his uncontrolled tire violation penalty, Allgaier raced his way back up to 14th behind Alfredo, Haley and Sieg. Brown was in 15th, Snider was in 17th and Clements was in 19th.
With 80 laps remaining and while the laps continued to dwindle, Briscoe stabilized his advantage to nearly a second over Chastain with Cindric trailing by two seconds. Hemric trailed by less than four seconds while Burton trailed by more than four seconds. Gragson settled in sixth while Annett and Jones battled for seventh. Allgaier, meanwhile, was up to 11th.
Twenty laps later and with 60 laps remaining, Briscoe extended his advantage to two seconds over Chastain followed by Cindric, Hemric and Burton. Behind, Allgaier was back in the top 10 as he was running in 10th place.
With approximately 40 laps remaining and with only 11 cars on the lead lap, Hemric was the first of the lead-lap competitors to make a green flag pit stop for fresh tires and fuel to complete the race to its distance. Shortly after, Burton made the turn to pit road, but he was penalized for a commitment line violation after he locked up his tires, nearly slid while turning down the banking and failed to keep all four tires inside the pit road entrance line. Haley, not long after, pitted along with race leader Briscoe, Cindric, Moffitt and Chastain.
While the pit stops under green continued to cycle through, Stefan Parsons spun while entering pit road. At the same time, Chastain and Briscoe made contact with one another as Chastain blocked and attempted to retain his spot ahead of Briscoe, who approached him with full speed, bumped him and struggled to navigate his way around Chastain’s No. 10 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet. Shortly after, Briscoe bumped and moved Chastain out of the way in Turn 3.
At the front, after Jones pitted, Gragson retained the lead ahead of Annett, Allgaier and Alfredo, but all needed to make a final pit stop to complete the race to its distance. Behind, Briscoe was in sixth ahead of Chastain, Cindric and Hemric.
With less than 20 laps remaining, Annett was the leader after teammate Gragson pitted. Behind, Briscoe was ahead by less than two seconds over Chastain. Shortly after, Briscoe extended his advantage over Chastain after Chastain struggled to navigate his way through three lapped cars.
With 12 laps remaining, Briscoe reassumed the lead after Annett pitted. By then, he was ahead by nearly three seconds over Chastain while Cindric started to close within Chastain for the runner-up spot.
Under 10 laps remaining, Briscoe continued to stabilize his advantage to nearly three seconds over Chastain and Cindric. For the remainder of the race and with a decent advantage, Briscoe was able to navigate his way through lapped traffic and claim his sixth checkered flag of the season.
The victory was the 17th in the Xfinity Series for Stewart-Haas Racing since joining forces with Fred Biagi as Briscoe currently leads the current Xfinity field with the most wins of this season (six). In addition, Briscoe recorded his third victory of this season with crew chief Richard Boswell and the 11th for Ford (ninth since June).
“At the beginning of the race, as soon as we took the green [flag], I knew that I was gonna be really good,” Briscoe said on MRN. “The car was way better than what it was yesterday and really what I was looking for. I think we were able to finish sixth in the first stage from the back. I knew that if we could just get clean air, I was gonna be in really good shape. That long run, I felt like I was not the greatest, but just having clean air helped. The green flag cycle, I lost the race last year because I didn’t come to pit road hard enough. I still, obviously, gave up a lot of time to Ross [Chastain]. I got to get a lot better at that. I didn’t want a caution because I had such a big lead, but I was wanting a caution so I didn’t have to do green flag pit stops. Overall, super happy to get HighPoint.com back in Victory Lane. It feels like it’s been forever and it’s only been a month and a half. Hopefully, we can carry this momentum into the Playoffs.”
While celebrating his win, Briscoe took a moment to address his on-track contact with Chastain.
“Me and Ross, I feel like, always race really hard, but we normally keep it clean,” Briscoe added. “I knew that Ross would’ve did the exact same thing in my situation, especially if I’d done what I did off of pit road. I packed air on him, I didn’t hit him. I think once I packed air on him, he slowed up so much. I was so close, I hit him eventually, but I didn’t wreck him. I think he knew I wasn’t very happy after getting ran down the apron. I just moved him out of the way. He’s trying to win his first race of the year. His job is to not let cars pass him…that’s the same as my job. I did what I did.”
Chastain finished in second place for his ninth top-five result of the season followed by Cindric, who has finished in the top five in the last nine Xfinity races. Despite the contact with Briscoe, Chastain expressed no hard feelings towards the race winner.
“I’m just proud of this whole Moose Fraternity team, this No. 10 car, this Kaulig Racing group,” Chastain said. “We’ve been working at it. We didn’t have the speed to start the year. We had high expectations. We’ve been working as a group. I’m just proud that we came here with no practice and we had a car capable of winning both days. We just needed a few more things to go our way. I think if we came back and raced again tomorrow, we probably had one. We keep getting one spot better every day. Our changes overtime were incredible. They were exactly what I needed. Once the race went on, then I needed a little more. It’s one of those things, it’s tough right now…this whole Kaulig group is getting hot and getting fast at the right time.”
“Obviously, a solid day,” Cindric added. “Not the best. We tried some things overnight. Probably the first doubleheader, we tried some things and it didn’t work. It didn’t help when we didn’t have track position. We weren’t able to work our way as forward as quickly we did yesterday on our PPG Ford Mustang. [We] Scored some solid points and move on to Daytona and try to have a little fun there.”
Jones and Hemric rounded out the top five following stellar runs. Finishing in the top 10 were Gragson, Allgaier, Annett, Herbst and Moffitt as only the top-seven competitors finished on the lead lap. Following his pair of penalties, Burton finished in 11th place ahead of Haley.
There were 12 lead changes for eight different leaders. The race featured five cautions for 24 laps.
With his pair of podium results, Cindric continues to lead the regular-season series standings by 62 points over Briscoe and 97 over Gragson.
Results.
1. Chase Briscoe, 107 laps led, Stage 2 winner
2. Ross Chastain, 24 laps led, Stage 1 winner
3. Austin Cindric, one lap led
4. Brandon Jones, eight laps led
5. Daniel Hemric
6. Noah Gragson, 11 laps led
7. Justin Allgaier, 19 laps led
8. Michael Annett, one lap down, five laps led
9. Riley Herbst, one lap down
10. Brett Moffitt, one lap down, 25 laps led
11. Harrison Burton, one lap down
12. Justin Haley, one lap down
13. Anthony Alfredo, one lap down
14. Ryan Sieg, one lap down
15. Tommy Joe Martins, two laps down
16. Brandon Brown, two laps down
17. Alex Labbe, two laps down
18. Myatt Snider, three laps down
19. Jeremy Clements, three laps down
20. David Starr, three laps down
21. Joe Graf Jr., three laps down
22. Josh Williams, three laps down
23. Jesse Little, three laps down
24. Chad Finchum, four laps down
25. B.J. McLeod, four laps down
26. Colby Howard, four laps down
27. Kody Vanderwal, four laps down
28. Stefan Parsons, four laps down
29. Jeffrey Earnhardt, five laps down
30. Matt Mills, six laps down
31. Stephen Leicht, eight laps down
32. Korbin Forrister – OUT, Brakes
33. Bayley Currey – OUT, Engine
34. Timmy Hill – OUT, Overheating
35. Kyle Weatherman – OUT, Suspension
36. Vinner Miller – OUT, Accident
The NASCAR Xfinity Series will run its next scheduled race at Daytona International Speedway on August 28, which will air at 7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN.
