When it comes to championship hunting, it’s hard to find a more stoic number than the No. 14.
During the 1970s, the iconic A.J. Foyt piloted his crimson red No. 14 race car to countless victories, Indianapolis 500 wins and Indy car championships.
Three decades later, NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart found success aboard the No. 14 stock car in the NASCAR Cup Series.
What may be one his top accomplishments came in 2011, when Stewart went on a tear during the playoffs to secure his third series championship.
As he looks to continue on the legacy of the No. 14, Chase Briscoe feels his boss and hero’s championship run in 2011 is an inspiring indicator that the playoffs offer a clean slate.
Briscoe enters the playoffs 12th on the grid. (HHP/Chris Owens)
“Everybody had written him off and thought there was no way he should even be in the playoffs, and he even said it himself and then to go out there and make a run like he did. I think using that to your advantage and knowing that it is a reset in a certain sense,” Briscoe said. “Everything we did the first 26 weeks, yeah, it mattered to get to this point, but now you could win the first 26 races and if you have three bad races in a row, you’re out of the playoffs.
“It’s all kind of irrelevant to a certain extent outside of getting you here. So I think, for us, just using that to go and know that, ‘Hey, just because we’ve had a bad two, three months doesn’t mean we still can’t do this.’ We’re fully capable of making a run, and then just talking to some of my teammates that have been in playoffs just about limiting mistakes and making sure that you don’t eliminate yourself.”
Nullifying mistakes during the playoffs can make or break a team’s championship aspirations.
For Briscoe and the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team, surviving each round weighs heavily on maximizing points each weekend.
“That’s kind of the big thing, especially the first round – how you don’t have to win,” Briscoe said. “You can point your way there and that’s something that is hard for me, obviously, at times is to understand the bigger picture and realize you don’t always have to win the race or try to take a 12th-place car and win with it – that you have to be able to take a 12th-place car and run ninth with it.
“That’s a huge day when it comes to playoff time, so just talking to those guys from that side of things has been a big help.”
Though it may be his first time competing for a Cup Series championship, Briscoe does have experience competing in a playoff format.
In 2020, Briscoe raced to the championship round in the NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs, before finishing fourth in the standings.
The formats may be extremely similar, however the racing on-track is what Briscoe won’t know until this weekend at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.
“It’s hard because until you’re actually there and experience it, I think it’s hard to say exactly what it’s gonna be like. But I know for me at least in the Truck Series and even the Xfinity Series, the intensity definitely ratchets up,” Briscoe said. “The stages, I remember in Xfinity I think it was at Kansas, battling for seventh was some of the hardest racing I’d ever done just because I knew that one point was gonna make a difference.”
Briscoe’s first two seasons in the Cup Series have been different in every way imaginable. While Briscoe didn’t win a race in his rookie season and missed the playoffs, he won for the first time in the Cup Series in week four of this season at Phoenix Raceway.
Briscoe celebrates after his first career victory at Phoenix. (HHP/Tim Parks)
“It’s definitely different. Last year, not that you don’t have anything to not race for anymore, but it’s just different when you’re not in the playoffs,” Briscoe said. “You’re going to the racetrack and you know the focus isn’t gonna be on you and you know the attention is just different when you’re not in the playoffs.
“I think for me this year it’s definitely different to know that you have a shot at still winning a championship, just being in the playoffs, all of the things that come from that just from an attention standpoint for our partners and things like that is definitely different. It’s nice. I feel like our team is excited.
“For us, we won at Phoenix in the third or fourth week of the year, so we’ve had a long time to think about the playoffs and think about what we’re gonna do and how we’re gonna try to do things in the playoffs and now that they’re finally here, it’s nice because we have had a really, really long time to think about them truthfully. I’m excited that they’re finally here.”
Since his victory at Phoenix back in March, the No. 14 Ford has only finished in the top-10 twice, with his last coming in May at the Coca-Cola 600.
The summer months have not been kind to Briscoe, but the 27-year-old is optimistic, as the playoffs begin.
“It is gonna be nice to hit the reset button. We haven’t done a lot of things well the last two or three months and haven’t really had the finishes to show for what I feel like the speed we’ve had,” Briscoe said. “Hopefully, we can hit the gate running these first three weeks or the next three weeks for this first round and kind of show what I know we’re capable of. I feel like they’re all really good racetracks for me career-wise too, so I’m looking forward to it and hopefully we can surprise a lot of people.”