Event Overview
● Event: Bank of America Roval 400 (Round 32 of 36) ● Time/Date: 2 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 10 ● Location: Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval ● Layout: 2.28-mile, 17-turn road course ● Laps/Miles: 109 laps/252.88 miles ● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 25 laps / Stage 2: 25 laps / Final Stage: 59 laps ● TV/Radio: NBC / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Notes of Interest
● Ford Performance Racing School and HighPoint.com are doubling down on Chase Briscoe’s No. 14 Ford Mustang for Sunday’s Bank of America Roval 400 on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval. The 2.28-mile, 17-turn road course is the site of the final road course event of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season and serves as the home track for the Ford Performance Racing School. ● Fans of Stewart-Haas Racing’s (SHR) rookie driver can enter for a chance to race on the same circuit used by NASCAR in one of Ford Performance Racing School’s Mustangs. During Sunday’s race, SHR and Ford Performance Racing School are asking NASCAR fans on Twitter to share why they want to #RaceWithChase for a chance to join Briscoe on the Roval for a one-day course and receive a tour of the SHR shop. The one-day, instructor-led class takes participants through a series of guided sessions on braking, shifting and car control before they are let loose on the Roval. ● The Roval is the perfect setting for a race experience with Briscoe, who took home the trophy in the inaugural NASCAR Xfinity Series race on the road-course layout in 2018. He started ninth, took the lead for the first time on lap 18, and led until lap 26. He regained the top spot on lap 32 and stayed out front for the final 24 circuits en route to his first of 11 career Xfinity Series wins. The victory led to a fulltime ride in SHR’s No. 98 for 2019 and he returned to the Roval that year to secure a ninth-place finish after leading a race-high 21 laps. ● In six road-course events this year, Briscoe has racked up three top-10 finishes with a best result of sixth, earned twice – at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, and at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. He was also a contender for the win in the most recent road-course event on Aug. 15 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway before a penalty on the final lap resulted in a 26th-place finish. ● Briscoe looks to build on his streak of three straight top-15 finishes, the most recent of which came Monday at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. After welcoming his first child with wife Marissa last Saturday, Briscoe headed straight for the final superspeedway race of the year. Sunday’s race was postponed to Monday after persistent rain. The No. 14 team started 17th and broke into the top-10 within the first five laps. A multicar accident left Briscoe’s Ford Mustang with heavy damage before the end of the first stage, but following a short rain delay, the Cup Series rookie was able to power his way through the field to the 14th position just before the race was called 71 laps short of the scheduled distance due to weather. ● The No. 14 Ford Performance Racing School/HighPoint.com Mustang will be sporting a pink window net in Sunday’s race as part of the “Window of Hope” campaign initiated by Cup Series driver Kurt Busch in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Briscoe will autograph his window net after the race and it will be part of an eBay auction hosted by The NASCAR Foundation, proceeds from which will benefit breast cancer research and treatment. ● With five races remaining, Briscoe leads the Cup Series Rookie of the Year standings by 263 points and has been the highest-finishing rookie driver in 26 of 31 events. With Rookie of the Year honors in the Truck Series (2017) and Xfinity Series (2019), Briscoe is looking to join Erik Jones and William Byron as only the third driver in history to claim the title in all three of NASCAR’s national touring series.
Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Ford Performance Racing School/HighPoint.comMustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
This will be your first Cup Series start at the Roval, but it’s one of your more successful tracks. Are you excited to try it out in this series? “I’m super excited. The Roval is where I got my first Xfinity win and led a ton of laps there in the Xfinity car in the last two races where it felt like we were the car to beat but threw it away, so I’m excited to get there in the Cup car. The competition is going to be a lot tougher. The other Chase (Elliott) seems to be really good at the Roval, so we’ll see what we can do. I feel like we’ll have a pretty good shot. We’ll have to drive through a lot of cars but, not being in the playoffs, we can do some things strategy-wise to steal some track position. Then I think we’ll be fast enough to stay up there. The road courses have been our strongest all year long, so we’ll continue to build on that and hope to do really well this weekend.” Fans can tweet during the race to take a Ford Performance Racing School class with you. Have you taken the class and is there anything you’ve learned from it? “I’ve done the class probably 10 or 15 times and it’s so fun. You go to some racing schools and they dial you back and don’t let you run too hard, but the Ford Performance Racing School is wide open. You run as hard as you want to go. I’ve definitely learned some stuff. It’s not a stock car or anything close to what we race, so there isn’t much to learn from that standpoint, but there’s plenty I’ve been able to take away just from how hard I can brake getting into a corner or working on how to find a passing zone. When we’re getting ready for the road-course races, I work with the instructors to just get back in the swing of turning left and right, and shifting back to the mindset of knowing when to push and when to take care of the car. I’ve even gone over there to run in the rain to prepare for that. So it’s a fun time, and you’re getting a pretty good idea of what we get to do.”
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