Matt Weaver
Chase Briscoe hasn’t made the main event for the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals since 2017 but gave himself a tremendously realistic chance to do so based on his prelim night effort on Monday night in the Tulsa Expo Center.
The NASCAR Cup Series regular, who competes on Sundays for Stewart-Haas Racing, started 12th in the 30 lap Monday night preliminary features but immediately began working his way through the top-10. He was racing for the lead by the halfway mark.
He ultimately finished fourth, which will start him near the front of a B-feature on Saturday night.
“Basically, if we don’t lose any spots, we’re in,” Briscoe said.
Briscoe also inherited the pole of the Race of Champions after posting the fourth fastest lap in time trials for the annual opening night showdown. He finished fifth in that race but came away from the entire night feeling as though the car is capable if the driver can make the right mental adjustments behind the wheel.
“I felt like if that caution didn’t come out with four [laps] to go, I was for sure going to run second,” Briscoe told Sportsnaut following the Feature. “I was right beside Shane. If I get by him, I don’t know if Tanner would have expected anybody to come up on the bottom. If I could have timed it right, I maybe could have gotten there. But I was for sure going to lock in, I felt like. And after the caution, still had a chance, I just truthfully ran four really bad laps. I just overthought everything.”
Overall, he said there were reasons to be excited and reasons to be disappointed in equal parts.
Tanner Carrick won the preliminary feature and locked himself into the Saturday night main event alongside Shane Golobic. The top two feature winners from every night automatically advance into the Championship Race.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
