STEWART-HAAS RACING
Brickyard 400
Date: July 21, 2024
Event: Brickyard 400 (Round 22 of 36)
Series: NASCAR Cup Series
Location: Indianapolis Motor Speedway (2.5-mile rectangular oval)
Format: 160 laps, broken into three stages (50 laps/50 laps/60 laps)
Note: Race extended seven laps past its scheduled 160-lap distance due to a green-white-checkered finish.
Race Winner: Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports (Chevrolet)
Stage 1 Winner: Denny Hamlin of Joe Gibbs Racing (Toyota)
Stage 2 Winner: Bubba Wallace of 23XI Racing (Toyota)
SHR Finish:
● Noah Gragson (Started 21st, Finished 9th / Running, completed 167 of 167 laps)
● Chase Briscoe (Started 20th, Finished 24th / Running, completed 167 of 167 laps)
● Ryan Preece (Started 31st, Finished 26th / Accident, completed 165 of 167 laps)
● Josh Berry (Started 37th, Finished 35th / Accident, completed 104 of 167 laps)
SHR Points:
● Chase Briscoe (16th with 469 points, 280 out of first)
● Josh Berry (22nd with 388 points, 361 out of first)
● Noah Gragson (23rd with 383 points, 366 out of first)
● Ryan Preece (26th with 329 points, 420 out of first)
SHR Notes:
● Gragson earned his seventh top-10 of the season and it came in his first career Brickyard 400.
● Gragson finished 10th in Stage 1 to earn one bonus point.
● Gragson led once for three laps.
● Briscoe finished 10th in Stage 2 to earn one bonus point.
● This was a home race for Briscoe as he grew up in nearby Mitchell, Indiana.
Race Notes:
● Kyle Larson won the Brickyard 400 to score his 27th career NASCAR Cup Series victory, his fourth of the season and his first at Indianapolis. The race ended under caution with Tyler Reddick finishing second.
● There were 10 caution periods for a total of 34 laps.
● Only 24 of the 39 drivers in the race finished on the lead lap.
● Larson remains the championship leader after Indianapolis with a 10-point advantage over second-place Chase Elliott.
Sound Bites:
“We struggled at the beginning part of the weekend, but definitely grateful to come back to Indy. I don’t know officially where we’d be with those guys running out of gas off of turn four, but we had plenty of fuel. Drew Blickensderfer (crew chief) called a great race and it’s always fun to have Bass Pro Shops on the hood. We struggled on Friday in practice and got a little better in qualifying. We qualified 21st and we just made progress all day. We got a stage point in Stage 1. Strategy, you never know when the caution is going to come out, but Drew made some great calls. I had more gas than the rest of them there and for a second I thought it was going to be Nashville 2.0 with a bunch of restarts, but we were able to hang on and come out of here unscathed.” – Noah Gragson, driver of the No. 10 Bass Pro Shops/Winchester Ford Mustang Dark Horse
“It was kind of a rough weekend for us from a speed standpoint. We were never really that good or that great. Made our car quite a bit better, but we still were never good enough to win, but we got it up in the mix. I was able to get it up there in the top-five for a little bit. Strategy just didn’t go our way. We pitted to prevent what happened at Nashville, and then obviously got to where we got in a wreck. It was disappointing. We were kind of up and down all day and thought we were going to be in good position if the cautions kept coming out to be in the mix there in the top-five, but obviously we got caught up in that big wreck. It’s kind of part of the deal at the end of these races. Anytime you have a caution with less than 10 to go, it all turns into chaos and we all start doing stupid stuff. That’s certainly what happened there. Everybody was in a really weird fuel situation there and we kind of hedged our bets hoping there would be more cautions, and then the wreck got us. Frustrating, for sure. Our car was definitely better than where we finished, but we’ll be back. Wish our results could’ve been a bit better, but everything that kind of could go wrong went wrong for us at the end. It’s cool to be back on the oval, the history of it. Hopefully, we can do it again next year. Every time I come here, I feel the love from the Hoosier State. It’s always nice to be back home and appreciated. I wish we could’ve had a better result for them, but I definitely feel the love and that’s my favorite part about coming home.” – Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse
“We just got caught in a tough spot there at the end of the race. We decided to stay out and risk it on fuel and it just didn’t work in our favor today.” – Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse
“It looked like when I was riding back there, I guess the 19 (Martin Truex Jr.) got spun out or something, we were all just stacking and I think I just got clipped from behind and turned into the wall. It’s an unfortunate end. It’s been a tough weekend. Honestly, today our car was really competitive. I was actually really happy with the car. We obviously started in the back and never could get the track position. I had a tough day on pit road, too. Every time we’d get top-20, we’d get knocked back. Honestly, I had a good experience today, really. We passed cars and had a good balance throughout the race. I really was pretty happy with it. We just needed something to just go our way, strategy-wise, to get up front. All in all, the guys did a great job. I put us in a hole in qualifying, but the car was pretty solid today. We’ve got some things to clean up, but we’ll go get ’em next time.” – Josh Berry, driver of the No. 4 Panini/Caitlin Clark Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Next Up:
The NASCAR Cup Series gets a two-week respite before returning to action Aug. 11 for the Cook Out 400 at Richmond (Va.) Raceway. The race begins at 6 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by USA and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.