Chase Briscoe on Coke 600: "I threw it away, plain and simple"

By late in Sunday night’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Briscoe had worked his way into the top-five. With 25 of the originally-scheduled 400 laps to go, Briscoe had moved into second behind race leader Kyle Larson.

As the laps ticked off, Briscoe was slowly closing the gap on the leader and finally got to his rear bumper with five laps remaining.

With two laps to go, Briscoe got side-by-side with Larson entering Turn 1 and appeared he may pass for the lead but ended up spinning out, which brought out a caution and sending the race into overtime.

Larson ended up wrecking in the first overtime and finished ninth while Briscoe rallied back for a fourth-place finish.

“We’ve obviously struggled really bad the last month-and-a-half and to have a good car like that and had a car capable of winning and I threw it away, plain and simple,” Briscoe said. “I’m glad we were able to at least get back to fourth.

“It’s unfortunate. There are 100 different things I would have done differently if I could re-do it again, but obviously you’re racing in the moment and I made a mistake and went too far.”

The move and eerily similar to the conclusion of the Bristol Dirt Race in April. Entering the final turn of the final of 250 laps, Briscoe was running down leader Tyler Reddick, made contact with him and both cars went spinning.

Reddick was able to straighten out his No. 8 Chevrolet and continue but not before Kyle Busch – who was running far back in third – nipped him at the checkered flag and stole the victory.

“I’m sure it looked the same. The move was totally different,” Briscoe said. “With Reddick, I was going in there to try to get there and I didn’t have an opportunity to get there, where with Kyle I knew there was no way I was gonna drive in there and clear him.

“Like I said, he was lifting so much earlier to run the fence that I could just drive it in there so much deeper typically. That last time I think it was two to go I was like, ‘Well, this is my last chance to try to get to his left-rear’ and I drove in there and just kind of spun out as soon as I went into the corner.

“I wish I could do it all over again. I just was running 110 percent. I probably should have been running 95.”

Still, the performance and finish by Briscoe and his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford team was their best since his victory at Phoenix in March.

“Just super proud of everybody at SHR,” Briscoe said. “I’m glad we were able to get back to fourth, but we definitely had a lot better race car than fourth.”