Brad Keselowski Racing NCWTS Post-Race Report: Talladega Superspeedway
No. 29 Cooper Standard Ford
Chase Briscoe’s chances to advance in the NASCAR Playoffs were derailed by a valve cover issue that sent him to the garage area in the early laps of the fred’s 250 at Talladega Superspeedway. While the team fought valiantly to earn every possible point and remained in contention until the final lap, it was not enough to advance to the next round of the Playoffs.
Taking the green flag from the fifth position, Briscoe and the lead pack pulled away in a single file line, hoping to get ahead of the mayhem and avoid a potential crash. Unfortunately, on lap five, Briscoe’s spotter reported that the Cooper Standard Ford F-150 was smoking badly. Briscoe had no choice but to bring his truck to the garage, and the Brad Keselowski Racing team worked quickly to diagnose and repair an oil leak in the valve cover. The team only lost 10 laps in the process, and returned to the track just prior to a caution on lap 20 of the 95-lap race.
Taking the wave around allowed Briscoe to earn back one of his laps, but he was mired in the 29th position and would need to depend on the misfortune of others to make up the points needed to advance. The Cooper Standard team fought hard for the remainder of the race and remained in the hunt as the point standings fluctuated throughout the race. They worked themselves up to the 22nd position before the checkered flag waved, but the deficit was simply too much to overcome. Briscoe ultimately came up eight points short, eliminating the team from Playoff contention.
Chase Briscoe: “Today was tough, but I’m really proud of the how this team handled our valve cover issue. We recovered as quickly as we could and we did everything possible to get every point we could to advance. In the end, I was just trying to help everyone we could to get them in front of the No. 8. It’s tough, because if you look back at Loudon, that’s one that really got away and we should have had a lot more points there. And if we’d gotten the four or five wins we could have had this year, we would have had enough Playoff points that we wouldn’t have been in this situation anyway. It’s definitely a tough one today, but we can’t point the finger at this race as the reason we didn’t make it. It’s hard to look at the positives right now, but last year this team qualified 15th and 16th, and we came here and qualified fifth and sixth. It just shows that, even though we’re shutting down at the end of the year, we’re still trying to fight and we’re making huge gains in our program. Our guys are still working hard. We’ll go on to the next four weeks and try to get a win for these Cooper Standard guys. They definitely deserve one.”
Starting Position: 5th
Finishing Position: 22nd
Status: Running
Stage Wins: 0
Laps Led: 0
Points Position: 7th
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