Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Ford Zoom Media Availability | Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 Ford Performance Racing School Ford Mustang in the NASCAR Cup Series for Stewart-Haas Racing, participated in two tire tests in advance of this weekend’s inaugural event at Nashville Superspeedway. He spoke about that experience and how he feels it will help in Sunday’s race during today’s Ford Zoom media call.
CHASE BRISCOE, No. 14 Ford Performance Racing School Ford Mustang — HOW PREPARED DO YOU FEEL GOING INTO THE WEEKEND AFTER THOSE TWO TIRE TESTS? “I feel like I at least have an understanding of what the racetrack is and kind of things I need to do to make speed, so I’m excited to get there this week. This is gonna be one of the few tracks I have a little bit of experience compared to a lot of the field, so just trying to take advantage of that. I’m looking forward to going to a new place. It’s always cool to go to a new racetrack and seeing a lot of fans. I think it’s sold out this weekend, so that’s gonna be really cool too. I’m just looking forward to the weekend and getting to Nashville.”
WHAT WERE YOUR IMPRESSIONS OF THE TRACK AND WHAT DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THE TRACK BEFORE YOU GOT THERE? “I didn’t know much. It was hard for me to even find video on the place from Busch races in the past, so I was kind of going there with an open mind. I knew that they’d done a lot of testing there in the past with the Cup cars and things like that, but I was surprised, honestly, with how much brake we were using and just how much speed we carried. That kind of caught me off guard. I think passing is gonna be a little challenging, but I think the good cars are definitely gonna rise to the front at a place like this just because handling is gonna be quite a bit of an issue, I think. I’m very curious to see what the resin is gonna do versus having PJ1 there, kind of where they placed it, and then I’m also curious just to see — when I was there there were only three cars total and it was pretty cool out, so I’m curious just what more cars will do to the racetrack and then the heat as well.”
FROM THE VIDEO YOU DID SEE IS IT EVEN COMPARABLE TO WHAT IT IS TODAY? “Yeah. The racetrack was the same. The infield and things like that I’m sure were different, but from a racetrack standpoint it looked the same as it did on videos and kind of how it raced was similar to how it was in single-car stuff, so I think it was pretty similar. Obviously, I don’t know because I didn’t run it back then, but from what I saw to what I experienced I felt like was relatively the same racetrack, for sure.”
ARIC ALMIROLA SAID ON THE RADIO THAT YOU GUYS HAD YOUR COMPETITION MEETING TODAY. DO YOU FEEL YOU’RE ANY CLOSER TO FIGURING OUT WHAT YOU’RE MISSING? “That was the longest competition meeting I’ve been a part of. I actually stepped out towards the end of it early and we had been going for over two hours, so it was definitely a long meeting. I felt like we covered a lot of different topics and items, just trying to figure out where we’re at and I think, for us, we’re all just in four different places. I’m the rookie trying to figure it out. Cole is kind of somewhere in the middle. Aric was really good last year and kind of struggling this year and obviously Kevin is not where he wants to be and where he’s used to being, so us four are in different categories, you could say. For us, Texas, I felt like our team specifically made huge gains. I felt like we tried something and it made a huge difference for us. Kevin, on the other hand, I think he acted like that was probably the worst car he’s had all year from a speed standpoint, so we’re just trying to figure out what we can take from each team and, like I said, for 14 specifically, which is the one I can talk the most about, I feel like we made gains at Texas. Hopefully, going forward the mile-and-a-half stuff and the 550 package you’ll start seeing us a little farther up the front now, but it’s hard to say. Time will tell. Every racetrack is different. Texas is obviously different from even a horsepower standpoint, so I don’t know. Obviously, there’s no lack of effort. We wouldn’t be having two-hour meetings and things like that if we weren’t trying to make it better. I’m positive we’re gonna get it better it’s just a matter of time, especially right now it’s a tough predicament because how much time and effort do you want to put into the current car when next year it’s kind of irrelevant. It’s a spot I would not envy to be the guys making the decisions, but I know that we’re trying everything we can to make the stuff better this year and it’s just gonna take time to figure it out, especially when we don’t have practice like we don’t right now.”
IS SMOKE IN THE MEETINGS? “Yeah, he’s not there in person, but he calls in. He was sitting there the whole two hours I was there today. I know towards the end of it, probably and hour and 45 minutes in he hadn’t said anything and they were like, ‘Smoke, you still there?’ And he chimed in right away, so he’s involved as well trying to figure it out. He had some good things input-wise that we weren’t really talking about in the meeting that I felt like needed to be addressed and he kind of steered us in that direction, so, hopefully, we can get it turned around. I feel like we’ve made gains, we just haven’t made significant gains. From where we started to where we are now it’s been really small baby steps along the way and it’s those big gains that you’ll really notice results-wise, so hopefully we can get it turned around.”
WHAT MAKES KYLE LARSON UNIQUE HAVING RACED AGAINST HIM IN TWO DIFFERENT DISCIPLINES? “Like he said, when you’re in really good equipment it definitely makes a big difference. Kevin always says it all the time, you can’t drive a slow car fast and that’s the truth, so it definitely helps being in the best stuff, but Kyle is extremely good, especially on the sprint car side. I haven’t gotten to race against him hardly at all in a winged sprint car, but I was able to run against him in non-wing sprint cars and still midget stuff and he’s just really good. Obviously, anything he gets in he’s really good and he’s one of those talents that it doesn’t matter what you put him in, especially if you put him in really good equipment, he’s gonna run up front. He adapts really quickly and he gets to race a lot, and I feel like that’s one thing that’s a huge benefit to him. Just looking at myself, for example, he gets to run 50-60 sprint car races a year, so he’s still running almost 100 races total this year, where I’ll only run the 38 Cup races or whatever it is and two or three dirt races. For example, when I go dirt racing I feel like I have a huge deficit just when I show up because I don’t have near the experience, don’t have near the laps and that’s a huge thing is having that seat time, and I think even going and running sprint car, midget and dirt late model races anytime you’re racing you’re getting better and you’re learning, and I think that’s huge, especially now that we don’t have practice. He’s fresh. He’s raced three or four races that week already and hopping in the race car, but Kyle is just really good. He’s always been good. I remember the first time I raced against him was 2012 or 2013 at Bloomington and I think he ran second and I ran third. A lot of guys don’t come to Bloomington right away and go fast, and he was fast right away, so he’s just really good. He adapts super quickly in anything he gets in and we’ve obviously seen that with the dirt late model now, so he’s just really good. When you have a good race car driver in really good equipment, you’re gonna see success and that’s what they’ve been able to have.”
HOW MUCH HOMEWORK WILL YOU DO ON THE NEXT GEN CAR FOR NEXT YEAR? “I think, for me, the biggest thing, truthfully, is just the safety side and trying to figure out where it’s at from that standpoint because we’ve been able to see some things and just talking to William and guys that have crashed it, it sounds like when you crash it it’s bad from just the driver taking the impact, so I think first and foremost we want to make sure we’re all safe. All 40 of us are competitors, but we all care about each other, so, for me, that’s the first thing is trying to understand where that’s kind of at, and outside of that I’m kind of wide-open in general with the race cars. I’m not one of the guys that is gonna sit there and tell you how to set the car up or if you put this setup in it’s not gonna work. I’m pretty open-minded and I think part of that is I don’t understand the engineering side as much as other guys do, and I think at times that’s a pro, but it can also be a con at times. For me, I just want to try and figure out specifically that feel that we need to look for, that feel that we have with independent suspension and all these things and the smaller side wall. I was trying to talk to guys that have run these cars before and kind of what makes them successful, whether it’s V8 Supercar guys or whatever — even IMSA guys — it’s kind of a similar style of car, so just trying to figure out that feeling you kind of look for specifically on a road course because that’s what they do. The ovals, I think, it’s kind of an open book. Nobody knows what that feel is yet or what to look for, so I think that’s just the biggest thing is the safety side and then just that feel that you need in the race car to go fast.”
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE GOING TO A PLACE LIKE NASHVILLE THAT HASN’T HOSTED A CUP RACE IN 37 YEARS? “It’s special. For me, my rookie season every track I go to in the Cup Series is special, but to be a part of the first one back is gonna be cool. There’s only a first race at a racetrack or a first time back in thirtysomething years one time, and then the second time — not that it’s not special, but it’s not as special as the first time — so to be able to experience that as a rookie is gonna be super cool. Like you said, there’s a lot of great racing history and heritage in the Nashville area. I remember running ARCA in Nashville at the fairgrounds and just how many people come out and how special it is to get a run in that area, so I’m excited. It’s one of the relatively closer racetracks to my hometown, so I know I’ve got a lot of people from southern Indiana driving down to watch this race and it’s just gonna be special to be a part of the first event back in 37 years, so looking forward to a sold-out crowd and a huge crowd. It’s gonna be something that on the Cup side a lot of the Cup guys are used to is racing in front of sold-out crowds because that’s something I’ve never gotten to experience because of COVID and everything else, so I’m excited to experience that this weekend, for sure.”
WHAT DO YOU ANTICIPATE FROM THE CROWD THAT WILL LIKELY COME FROM ADJOINING STATES? “For sure. It’s obviously no secret that Nashville is a great town to come and experience and it’s a nice little mini vacation in a sense for a lot of people. They get to go to Nashville, go downtown, go do whatever you want to do, whether it’s to go listen to country music or go to the bars or whatever that might be, and you get to go to a race on Sunday and drive home. So it’s really the perfect area to go have a race, I feel like. The same with the banquet. It’s a great spot for NASCAR to have the banquet, so I’m excited to get there. Nashville is a city I haven’t been to a ton, but I’ve always really enjoyed it, so I’m looking forward to getting there on Friday and going and seeing all the sights and this will be one of the few races my wife will be able to go with me to, so I’m excited to go out to dinner and do all those things with her as well.”
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE ADVANTAGES OR DISADVANTAGES OF A CONCRETE TRACK AND TRYING TO FIGURE THAT OUT? “I’m just a dirt guy, so, to me, it doesn’t matter. Concrete, pavement, blacktop, whatever the surface is, to me it’s all the same if it’s not dirt, so I don’t necessarily get too tied up in the differences. For me, they all drive relatively the same. They look different and how the rubber gets picked up under caution and things like that is different, but from a feel standpoint I don’t know that I notice a difference from a concrete track to an asphalt track or whatever. For me, it’s all the same. It looks different, but I’m probably not the best guy to ask that just because I’ve never really been able to tell a huge difference in grip level or how it drives. For me it’s all relatively the same. For me, I’m just curious to see how the track is different from when I was there tire testing and, like I said, there were only three cars total to now when there are gonna be three series of forty something cars each and just the temperature and things like that.”
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THE TIRE TEST THAT YOU CAN APPLY THIS WEEKEND? “I think just having kind of an understanding of what my car needs. It’s obviously a limited practice at 50 minutes. I already know what my limit as far as how far I can drive into a corner and just things like that. I’ve already done 30-40 lap runs, short runs, so I know where the car builds and what direction it’s gonna go. Obviously, that could be different with the different amount of cars and the temperature and things like that, but I at least feel like I know what I need my car to feel like to go and have some speed. We were able to try some things in the tire test and some changes didn’t work as good as others from just the speed standpoint, so just knowing those. Other guys it’s probably gonna take them a run or two to get adjusted and learn the racetrack, where I feel like right off the truck I’m gonna at least know where I need to be. So, I think just having that advantage will be good, especially on a short practice weekend.”
HOW FREQUENTLY HAVE YOU AND YOUR TEAM GONE OVER THE DATA FROM THAT TIRE TEST IN PREPARATION FOR THIS WEEKEND? “To be honest with you, I’m probably not the guy to ask. They are definitely talking more about that stuff weeks leading up. We talked about it today at length and a little bit last week, but I was pretty happy with how our car ended the day at the tire test, so they kind of already knew my input going into it, that I wanted to start pretty close to where we ended just because I felt like it was pretty good, so I’m pretty sure that my engineers and Johnny have been talking about small little tweaks, but outside of that last week and today our meetings about just what we need going into this weekend I haven’t been a huge part of just because they already knew I was happy with where we ended, so they’re gonna try to shoot for that balance. In our competition meeting today we were just talking about Nashville and what we needed. I think it was Kevin who asked me to talk about it, so I went on at length about what I feel like as a company we’re gonna need to go good there, so I’ve definitely been involved, but from the setup and things like that, Johnny and the engineers knew I was happy so they were just trying to look at small things that would make it a little bit better.”
WHAT HAS BEEN THE INPUT FROM ARIC BECAUSE HE WAS IN THE MOST RECENT XFINITY RACE AT NASHVILLE? “Honestly, Aric didn’t really say anything. I just kind of talked the whole time and I can’t remember, Aric may have had to leave right after that, I can’t remember, but I talked about it just because it’s so different from the Busch car then to the tires and everything else we’re running. They were kind of just wanting my opinion on it. I think me and Aric and Cole, kind of talking to Kevin right before the competition meeting just about Road America and some things just because Kevin has never been there but us three have. But for Nashville though it was kind of just me because we recently had just been there in a Cup car and that was gonna be the most comparable thing. I think Aric did add that it was gonna be pretty hard to pass, kind of like how I felt, so not a ton of input but I think we’re all kind of on the same page that it’s gonna be fairly hard to pass and we were just concerned with what the resin was gonna do.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ON THE PJ1 IN GENERAL? “I don’t know. I think it just depends. Some racetracks I feel like it helps and other racetracks I feel like it’s almost a crutch for just the layout of the track. Texas, I never got to run the old Texas, but I always thought the old Texas looked like one of the coolest racetracks you could go run at. You have all the way from the bottom to the middle to the fence it was just a fun-looking racetrack, and now it’s obviously pretty bottom dominant and even in 20 years I don’t know if we’re ever gonna be able to run to the middle to the top just because of how the shape of the track is and the banking and things like that. There are some tracks I feel like you have to have it just because of how the track is laid out if you want it more than one groove. The problem is typically the PJ1 just makes it even more of a one-groove track and instead of being one-groove on the bottom now we’re one-groove in the middle. It’s tough. I feel like Bristol has been scienced out enough now to where it’s normally pretty two grooves. It’s on the bottom. It’s on the top. We can kind of move around, but it seems like the mile-and-a-half stuff it’s hard to get it to where the PJ1 doesn’t turn into just the dominant lane. I almost think at some tracks it would be better to just leave it off. Charlotte, I think, would be better with it off, personally, but it’s hard. I think that stuff is so variable dependent on how many guys run through it, the temperature, how it’s laid down. It’s gotten better over the last couple of years, but I still think it’s just a tough situation because some racetracks need it — some it’s better for and some it’s worse for — it’s hard to really say what’s what. I would have thought that maybe at Nashville this weekend we would have had it, but instead we went with the resin. I don’t know what that changes. I don’t think the resin has any extra grip to it, but just things like that. It’s hard until you go and try it and now with no practice it doesn’t have time to get activated before the race. I think we saw that at Charlotte a little bit with the truck guys going out in practice at the beginning. They wrecked a couple of them, so it’s just hard to go out, especially with the no practice now to show up to some of these tracks and just go right away and it be OK.”
WHAT IS THE MOST UNIQUE TROPHY YOU HAVE IN YOUR COLLECTION AND WHAT IS THE MOST ONE YOU WOULD LIKE TO ADD TO IT? “That’s tough. I’d say probably one of the most unique trophies would probably be the Eldora shovel. I think that’s one of those that it unique. Not many racetracks give away a shovel, so I would say that’s one of the more unique ones. I would love to add the Daytona 500 trophy, obviously, or the Brickyard 400 — any of those trophies. I’ll take any of them I can get at this point, but from a cool factor I would say that those would definitely be pretty sweet to have. New Hampshire’s is very unique with the lobster and Texas has the pistols, so any of those. I think, for me right now, I’ll take any trophy I can get, but those are definitely ones that kind of stand out. I guess Kentucky when we used to run there, they had the jukebox. That was always pretty cool I thought.”
YOU SAID THE TIRES STARTED TO CORD IN THE FIRST TIRE TEST AFTER 20-25 LAPS. WHAT CAUSES THAT TO HAPPEN? “I don’t know. Nashville, the cars hadn’t been on that racetrack for so long. It’s just so fresh and so clean that it just peels the rubber right off the tires, so we couldn’t go but literally 20 laps and it would start cording. The second time we went back they put some of that resin down, which was supposedly gonna help put rubber into the racetrack and we were able to go 30-35 laps, but I think once we get more cars there it will be better from that standpoint because more rubber will be in the racetrack. I don’t know how to answer why they cord. I’m not necessarily a Goodyear engineer, but I think a lot of it goes down to it seems like racetracks that you go to that are fairly clean the rubber gets taken off the tire and put into the racetrack, so the more you go the more rubber is coming off the tire and it eventually cords. I’m glad that we at least have the warning of a cord, instead of just blowing a tire right away. It’s nice for a driver to kind of have that warning and be able to save the car and save your body in that sense. I’m not sure why they necessarily cord. I don’t know if it has something to do with setup or the track or what, but we definitely had an issue the first time we went to Nashville and felt like we made it quite a bit better the second time.”
