By Brian Eberly, Contributing Writer
SPARTA, Ky. – The impressive 2016 season of Chase Briscoe continued at Kentucky Speedway as the 21-year-old rookie from Mitchell, Indiana set a new track record to win the pole for Friday night’s ARCA Racing Series Crosley Brands 150.
“It was pretty hairy. We’re almost wide open all the way around here,” Briscoe said, of his lap around the recently repaved 1.5-mile track.
The pole was Briscoe’s series-leading sixth of the season in the 19th race. The top nine qualifiers all broke the previous track record set by Parker Kligerman in 2009.
The week got off to a rough start for Briscoe’s No. 77 Cunningham Motorsports team as something broke on the team’s Ford during the first lap of a Tuesday afternoon test session at Kentucky. The team loaded up and headed back for the shop in Moorseville, N.C. to basically work around-the-clock to repair the car to return to Kentucky in time for Friday morning’s practice session.
“It’s definitely bittersweet,” Briscoe said of winning the pole. “To say it’s been a long week has been an understatement. I think the whole entire team is going on about probably 14 hours of sleep the past four days. We’ve been going non-stop at the shop. Hopefully we can get the win because that would be pretty awesome.
“It’s just a testament to all the guys. It’s unbelievable. If you weren’t at the shop you wouldn’t believe it. It’s pretty unreal. Literally on Wednesday around 4:00 we didn’t even have a front end on the entire race car and we got it on the road by Thursday around 7:00. To come here and do what we did, it’s pretty unbelievable.”
The trouble continued for Briscoe in the lone 90-minute practice session on Friday afternoon as he felt a vibration on the first lap.
“It was vibrating like crazy and felt like it was pretty much going to go into the fence again. We came in and changed the hub and the right front rotor and then went back out. We had to bring it up to speed and were a little conservative as far as what we were doing set-up wise. We had to work our way back to what we’ve been doing all year long.”
Briscoe will look to earn his sixth victory of the season and clinch the championship in Friday night’s 150-mile event.
The race will be broadcast on Fox Sports 2 beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET. Live timing and scoring will be available on ARCARAcing.com.
The full starting grid for the Crosley Brands 150 at Kentucky Speedway:
- Chase Briscoe
- Shane Lee
- Austin Cindric
- Dalton Sargeant
- Bret Holmes
- Zane Smith
- Matt Tifft
- Kyle Weatherman
- Gus Dean
- Myatt Snider
- Codie Rohrbaugh
- Brandon Jones
- Tom Hessert
- Matt Kurzejewski
- Sarah Cornett-Ching
- J. Fike
- John Wes Townley
- Josh Williams
- Mark Thompson
- Tom Berte
- Nick Higdon
- Thomas Praytor
- Rick Clifton
- Mike Basham
- Chris Bailey
- Brad Smith
- David Sear
- Ed Pompa
- Mike Senica
- Mark Meunier
- Con Nicolopoulos
- Wayne Peterson
