KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Chase Briscoe capped off his ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards championship season in the best way possible, by winning from the pole in Friday night’s season finale at Kansas Speedway.
Briscoe received the top starting position by virtue of the rulebook, after morning mist cancelled qualifying, utterly dominating the Kansas ARCA 150 by leading 68 of 100 laps en route to his series-leading sixth victory of the year.
While Dalton Sargeant used pit strategy to lead 32 laps during the middle portion of the event and Briscoe nearly saw his chances evaporate after being involved in a multi-car incident at the halfway point, the Mitchell, Indiana native never gave up – ultimately taking the lead for good with 24 laps to go when Sargeant’s car lost power in turns one and two.
Sargeant was able to get his car refired, but it was too late for him to challenge Briscoe, who ultimately drove home to a 1.464 second victory over his Cunningham Motorsports teammate Austin Cindric.
“This thing was unbelievable. It was on rails tonight,” Briscoe said in victory lane. “To cap off (a championship season) with a win is so big. Last year, I was on pit road catching tires for some of these guys and for (co-owners) Briggs (Cunningham) and Kerry (Scherer) to take a chance on me and me to be able to pay these guys back with a championship … it’s just huge.”
Briscoe won races at Winchester Speedway, Iowa Speedway, Lucas Oil Raceway, Pocono Raceway, Chicagoland Speedway and Kansas during his championship run, ultimately clearing second-place points man Tom Hessert III by 525 markers in the end.
“Opportunities like this don’t come along very often, and I’m so blessed to be standing here. I want to be at the Sprint Cup level one day and hopefully this season will open some doors and I can get the opportunity to show that I can do it in the future.”
Though Briscoe led the first 44 laps from the pole, Sargeant’s fuel-only pit stop under the race’s second caution handed him the lead at lap 45 despite contact with Josh Williams on pit exit, with the Florida teenager leading Briscoe and Cindric back to the green flag at halfway five laps later.
But a half circuit after the restart, things got crazy out front.
Briscoe lost the nose of his Ford fighting for the lead with Sargeant, and nearly spun out to the bottom of the track as he attempted to gather things back up. In doing so, he made contact with Cindric and then ended up three-wide in the middle, ultimately getting together with his third teammate in Myatt Snider and sending Snider spinning in turn three.
In addition, Bret Holmes smashed into Kyle Weatherman as cars piled onto the scene, shoving Weatherman into the nose of Snider’s car as more than a half-dozen cars were collected in the carnage.
