NASCAR XFINITY SERIES
SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2020
DRYDENE 200 – DOVER INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
FORD PERFORMANCE DRIVER – POST RACE QUOTES
FORD FINISHING RESULTS:
1st – Chase Briscoe
3rd – Austin Cindric
Chase Briscore collected his sixth win of the season Sunday, piloting his No. 98 Ford Mustang to the checkered flag at Dover. Ford teammate Austin Cindric finished 3rd.
CHASE BRISCOE, No. 98 Highpoint.com Ford Mustang — YOU WENT FROM LAST TO FIRST, DESCRIBE THAT DRIVE AS YOU RACED YOUR WAY THROUGH THE FIELD: “As soon as we took the green I knew that I was going to be really good. The car was way better than what it was yesterday and was really what I was looking for. We were able to finish sixth in the first stage from the back and I knew if we could get clean air I was going to be in really good shape. The long run, I felt like I was not the greatest but I think having clean air helped. I lost the race last year because I didn’t come to pit road hard enough and I still obviously gave up a lot of time to Ross (Chastain). I have to get a lot better at that. That is my biggest weakness right now. I didn’t want a caution because I had such a good lead but I also was wanting a caution so I didn’t have to do a green flag pit stop. I am super happy to get HighPoint.com back in victory lane. It feels like it has been forever but it has only been a month and a half. Hopefully we can carry the momentum into the playoffs.”
DESCRIBE THE RACING WITH ROSS (CHASTAIN): “He came off pit road and I felt like I was going 30 or 40 miles per hour quicker than him. He kind of guarded the top so I went low and then he just turned left and blocked me. I could have just wrecked him getting into three but I know he is trying to get their first win of the year and that is hard racing. He kind of blocked me so I kind of just packed air on him. If he is going to keep doing that to me I will just do it back. I race people like they race me and felt like he could have gave me the bottom getting in and still would have had a better situation packing air on the side of me. It was a crazy race there at the end and it was raining and everything else. I am glad we pulled it off.”
IT HAS BEEN SIX RACES WITHOUT A WIN. HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR YOU TO GET BACK IN VICTORY LANE TO GET THE PENDULUM POINTED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION? “I think it is huge. I don’t think it is any secret that we have been frustrated amongst ourselves just not having the speed we had at the beginning of the year. The 22 has been really good and we are glad that Ford is winning but we want to be the leading candidate but they have really pulled away in the points standings. It is nice to get back in victory lane. This is when all the talks are going on for next year and after a day yesterday when you spin out and it isn’t a good day to back it up today with the win is a big deal.”
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 22 PPG Ford Mustang — Finished 3rd
“We have been able to use these doubleheaders to try to learn from day to day and I think we did that. Probably a little bit backwards but I think we reeled in the PPG Ford Mustang at the end but just didn’t have enough time. We got cut off there trying to get into the pit box. It wasn’t meant to be. To come out with a top-3 is a solid day. I felt like I drove my butt off and the team made improvements from the day before with execution and that is all I can ask for some days.”
TWO RACES IN TWO DAYS, HOW MUCH OF A TOLL HAS IT TAKEN ON YOU? “This track is probably one of the harder ones to do it at for sure. I definitely feel like I earned a sleep in tomorrow morning. But it is fun. I love this place. I would come back and race it tomorrow if I had the opportunity.”
AUSTIN CINDRIC POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE
HOW CONFIDENT ARE YOU HEADING INTO DAYTONA AND THE PLAYOFFS? “For us, Daytona is a bit of a wildcard race being a superspeedway. I really would love to be able to contend for a win at that type of racetrack because I feel like that is somewhere I have really grown in confidence. It is going to take some work during the week with my spotter. Today was decent. We definitely cleaned up some things on pit road today. I am proud of that. I am proud of those guys for recognizing issues and getting them better. That is half the battle. We tried some things today to try to learn for later in the year and we fell backwards a bit. We came on strong there at the end and I feel like we gained a there on the green flag cycle. I had my car set up well for the end of the race. It was kind of too little too late. Track position was still really important and it would be hard to pass the 10 without him getting stuck in traffic. We ran those guys down from about a straightaway back. It was just too little too late. We probably could have been a little better to get more stage points today.”
STRANGE FOR YOU TO NOT BE AT THE INDY 500 TODAY? “Yeah, I just walked into the media center and I am seeing the different strategies and trying to make sense of it all. Hopefully it works out for our boys.”
DO YOU EXPECT TO BE BACK IN THE XFINITY SERIES NEXT YEAR? “I can’t say I have gotten a whole lot further with my plans in the last week or so. My on track stuff has to stay strong. That is important. Like I said before, I love the group of guys I am working with and I would love to continue that. Deals in racing are hard to follow and I am motivated to figure out what the next steps are and how to either stay with the guys I am racing with or in the Ford camp or get an opportunity where I can build my career in NASCAR. That is where my head is at but overall no major announcements or changes or anything worth talking about yet.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE READY FOR THE CUP SERIES? “I think it would greatly benefit my driver development to go to the next level. I am not saying I would be able to contend for wins if I had the best car but I think on some days I could be that strong and other days I want to learn from the best. The top-25 guys that race in that series are the best. It is hard to break into that caliber of a driver and I want to learn from that and be pushed to be perfect every lap and I think I can take the next step in my career by being around the best.”
IT SEEMED LIKE THIS WAS LARGELY A RACE THAT WAS DETERMINED BY TRACK POSITION AND CLEAN AIR, EVEN WITH THE LOWER DOWNFORCE PACAKGE THE XFINITY CAR RUNS. WHY WAS THAT? “Your guess is as good as mine. I think this is the most track position dependent race I have had at Dover. You sometimes see that at Iowa where you get a really hot track and everybody just lines up on the same line. Everything was really a grip premium instead of a balance premium. Even when you could get somebody free it was so hard to complete the pass because you take the air off the sid of that car and it is at a premium. Your guess is as good as mine. It may have to do with the temperature. It is definitely the hottest it has been since I have run an Xfinity car here. I still feel like I am making a difference inside the race car. There are still options, there are just no good options. It is a challenge for sure. It was a challenge today. I got held up pretty early in the race and just wasn’t able to make headway. I am trying to make passes and it is easy to be taken advantage of and that happened to me a couple of times in the race. It was a real grind to try to get back up to the top-three. It was just good execution and taking advantage of the right opportunities and passes at the right time. I think if I would have been able to get the lead I probably could have held it. I think I had a better car yesterday and probably could have passed for the lead if given enough laps but today I am not sure that was possible for us and our car. I think we learned a lot and hopefully we can apply it.”
WERE YOU SURPRISED WITH HOW POSITION DEPENDENT THE RACE WAS? “Yesterday I was surprised, today I had plenty of expectation on what today was going to hold. I didn’t have much dirty air yesterday so I knew I was going to battle a few more things with my car. I think we made big enough changes to where I felt significant differences in different parts of the corner. I think that is a positive that we were able to decipher that but yeah, I knew it was going to be a lot more challenging. You can’t just dive down in and slide somebody. The track is extremely narrow, that is another thing. It is hard to run side by side when you are the car on the bottom trying to create momentum by driving into the corner deep. I don’t think the track was any wider than yesterday. If anything it felt like the top was less usable than yesterday but also my car wasn’t as suited to it as it may have been yesterday.”
CHASE BRISCOE POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE
YOU SEEMED VERY DETERMINED TO WIN TODAY AFTER WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY. IS THAT FROM FRUSTRATION OF WHAT YOU DID OR FEELING LIKE YOU HAVE TO GIVE BACK TO YOUR GUYS AFTER MESSING UP LIKE THAT? WHAT IS THE MOTIVATING FACTOR AFTER YESTERDAY? “Obviously every race I am going as hard as I possibly can, week in and week out. I feel like I was pretty dejected after yesterday. I told my wife and even told our shock guy before the race. I was like, ‘Man, I am winning this thing.’ I knew after yesterday, our car had a front clip that was bent down over an inch, no pan and we still ran 10th. I knew we had a really good race car. Our backup was even better than our primary. I don’t know. I felt like I just really screwed up yesterday. I just had a lot of weight on my shoulders and feel like I let a lot of people down. I was just trying to redeem myself. Right now is silly season and any time you do something stupid like spinning out by yourself you want to try to show your worth. It is pretty cool to win from the back in a backup car here. I just felt like our Mustang was really good today. It just makes my job a lot easier when our cars are that good and today was honestly the best car we have had all year long and it was our backup. Hopefully we can learn something from the car and take it down the road somewhere and be just as good.”
ROSS (CHASTAIN) SAID HE WAS UPSET ABOUT THE CONTACT BUT THAT HE WOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME THING? DID THAT MOVE GO OFF THE WAY YOU PLANNED IT OR WAS THERE SOME SORT OF THING WE DIDN’T SEE? “No, I don’t know if they showed it on TV but when he was merging off of pit road I was going quite a bit faster and he kind of left a lane on the outside so I was trying to take it and he blocked it so I went left and he ran me all the way dang near to the apron. I personally wouldn’t have done that. I would have given him the inside and try to back air on him and run around the outside knowing that I had stickers. Me and Ross I feel like we always race really hard but normally keep it clean. I knew that Ross would have done the exact same thing in my situation, especially if I would have done what I did off pit road. I did pack air on him. I didn’t hit him. I think once I packed air on him and he slowed up so much I was so close that I hit him eventually. I didn’t wreck him. I just moved him out of the way. I think he knew I wasn’t very happy after getting ran down to the apron but he is trying to win his first race of the year and his job is to not let cars pass him and to pass race cars. That is the same as my job. That is what I get paid to do, to pass race cars and try to keep cars from passing me and try to win races. I feel like Ross would have done the same thing and I did what I did and I don’t feel bad about it just because I felt like if he wouldn’t have done what he did then I probably wouldn’t have done it. But after he did that I felt like it was open door and roles reversed he would have done the same thing.”
DID YOU THINK YOU HAD A RACE WINNING CAR YESTERDAY AS WELL BEFORE THE SPIN? “It is hard to say because we didn’t get to adjust on it. The first stage we were really loose and the second stage we were able to go from seventh to fourth on the restart and were kind of just the same speed. I think all the top-four cars were the same speed and whoever got out front would be really good. I was still on the loose side. I think we could have made it a race winning car, but I don’t think we had as dominant of a car as we did today. Some of that is unloading. We were able to take our notes from yesterday and apply it today. I think our car today was better. Truthfully, I was a little concerned with this car going into it. Yesterday was the car that we ran at both Dover’s last year and Bristol and the worse that car ran was like third or fourth. The car we ran today was our Bristol car form this year where we ran second, but it was one of our worst races speed wise. I was a little worried, I am not going to lie about that. I felt like it was the most dominant, best car we have had all year long. We were still a little tight but still better than most. It is cool to win from the back, in a backup car.”
DOES THIS WIN GIVE YOU CONFIDENCE GOING INTO THE PLAYOFFS THAT IF YOU RUN INTO TROUBLE THAT YOU CAN BATTLE BACK FROM IT? “Yeah, I think all year long we have done that. Homestead we were seven laps down, came back, got all the laps back and finished seventh and then won the race the next day. Pocono, we spun out with 18 laps to go and came back to win. Then to do what we did today, we just never give up as a team. Truthfully, as a race car driver the fenders can be tore off the thing and I will still try to get every position I can and run 110% every lap. That is one of the strengths of our team. We don’t give up. After Homestead, I don’t think anything is out of question. I think that is a strength for us in the playoffs. We have made it a lot harder on ourselves than we wanted to but I think it will be a great experience come playoff time. A lot of these teams haven’t dealt with adversity like we have. We continue to rally and fight and try to salvage a top-10 or comeback the next day and win. I do think that experiencing this in the regular season will help us in the playoffs and maybe that will be one of our strengths come playoff time if we need it.”
ANY REASON YOUR CAR DID BETTER IN TRAFFIC THAT SOME OTHERS? “I think our car was really good today but for whatever reason I felt like I was one of the few cars that could go to the top and make speed where a lot of guys were so committed to the bottom that it made it really hard to pass guys. We were able to go up to the fence and that is how I got by Justin (Allgaier) but going to the top in lap traffic. I could maneuver around a little more and I think that is the biggest thing. You can pass here. It isn’t the easiest place to pass but if your car is good it makes it a lot easier. Even last year at this race we started dead last and led the most laps and got beat on a green flag pit stop. Our car is really good here in traffic in general and can move around and it just makes it a lot easier on my end when you aren’t so committed to one lane.”
DO YOU NORMALLY CALL UP YOUR WIFE OR MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY AND KIND OF GUARANTEE VICTORY? “Well, I did at Darlington this year after the miscarriage. I told Melissa I was going to go win for her and that one worked out. Maybe I need to do it every week because it has obviously worked out when we do it. I don’t know what the reason is or why I have a feeling. Marissa is the same way. She will call me and be like, ‘You are going to win today, I have a feeling.’ Nine times out of ten it seems like we win. Hopefully I start feeling that a little more and can call it. After seeing the race car yesterday and how tore up it was, to be able to finish 10th, that honestly raised my confidence a lot going into today. I felt like if our car was that tore up and we could still have quicker lap times than some of the leaders, I knew with a good race car we were going to be really good. I just had that feeling that if we got the car driving good we would be able to move around and make gains on it and that is what we were able to do.”
WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU WEREN’T ABLE TO WATCH THE INDY 500? “I have never not been able to watch it. I was going to joke around with the team guys under that long green flag run and ask who was leading but figured that probably wouldn’t look the greatest so I just held off and then as soon as I got in the media center me and Cindric were over there watching while we were waiting to come over here. I am excited to watch the Indy 500. Growing up in Indiana, it is a big deal to anybody in motorsports but there you watch it religiously. It has been weird to not watch the opening ceremonies and things that I would normally do. I am looking forward to watching it. This is one of the few races where we are flying back with the Cup guys and have to wait on them anyway so I will get to watch it to the end. Hopefully it is a good race.”
WHAT KIND OF CHANGED THIS WEEK FOR YOU GUYS TO GET BACK IN VICTORY LANE? “I think this is huge for our team. We have been kind of scratching our heads and obviously we are really glad the other Ford has been winning in the series but we want to be that lead guy and we want to be the team that is the bar. We really haven’t been that these last couple of weeks and it has been frustrating for me and our guys. We want to get better. To do it like we did today, going to to a backup, those guys had to work their tails off yesterday to get that car ready and change engines and all the things that go into that. To be able to have the performance we did today, I think that is huge for their confidence and huge for team morale. I feel like it is really going to turn our team around and that is what we truthfully needed. We have been really down on ourselves. To be able to do that just shows that there is no give up in this team and it is just awesome to be a part of.”
