Acknowledging something wasn’t clicking with his Stewart-Haas Racing team, Chase Briscoe felt it was time for a change for the second half of the NASCAR Cup Series season.
It comes in the form of reuniting with crew chief Richard Boswell beginning this weekend at Nashville Superspeedway. Earlier this week, Stewart-Haas Racing announced that Boswell would replace Johnny Klausmeier, who’s been serving a six-week suspension for a counterfeit part on the No. 14 Ford.
Briscoe and Boswell won eight races together in 67 starts in the Xfinity Series. The two last worked together in 2020.
“Boswell might not be the answer,” Briscoe said of a turnaround, “but I feel like could help me right away from a driver’s standpoint. Hopefully, the results will start showing. I feel from a speed standpoint, we’re off right now. But in general, our cars aren’t really good, so we’re trying to keep our expectations realistic and know what we need to do to improve our cars. Hopefully, we can do that.”
Briscoe is 31st in the championship standings with four top-10 finishes and lost 120 points from the penalty. His average finish is 19.8.
“When I came up from the Xfinity Series, it was something I’d ask for, and it probably didn’t make the most sense at the time and it was a 50-50 decision if we were going to go that direction with Richard,” Briscoe said of promoting Boswell. “It just didn’t really work out to have that happen. Truthfully, even in the offseason, we talked about making a change and just felt like with how good we finished last year, if we could start off on that same foot, we’d be in a really good place for the season. When that didn’t really work out and then the penalty happened, it probably expedited things a little bit.
“I think Johnny did an incredible job. That guy is one of the nicest individuals. He’s been working with Richard two or three hours a day just trying to get him in line to help Richard kind of shorten that learning curve, and for a guy that just got removed from the job, he didn’t have to do any of that. But that’s just the type of person Johnny is, and I respect Johnny a ton for that.
“We did have a lot of success. We were five laps away from making the final four — won my first Cup race with him. It was a hard decision, but at the end of the day, I had a lot of confidence with Richard. We won as many races as we did together, and I felt like, down deep, that’s the change that needed to be made. Whenever the penalty came out and how our season was, it made sense to do it so we can get a leap start on next year.”
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Although they didn’t graduate into the Cup Series together, Briscoe believes it worked out for the best. The two stayed in contact over the years, talking two or three times a week, and Briscoe described them as “super close.” The former Cup Series rookie of the year is confident he and Boswell are both in better positions to succeed once again on the same team.
But Briscoe also understands it’s going to take time to get where the team needs to be, and Boswell is good at keeping him focused. In the few days they’ve been back together, Boswell has already sent Briscoe a “ton” of notes, providing help on the study side of the sport.
Being kept accountable is a big thing for the driver, and Boswell does that. Furthermore, Briscoe described his new crew chief as a guy “that’s not afraid to get onto you if you’re doing something wrong.”
When Briscoe was “bummed” after the car’s performance in practice, Boswell reminded him a turnaround isn’t going to happen in three days. But the season can be salvaged, said Briscoe.
“You can always get there,” he said. “It’s no secret all the Fords, in general, are off, but we need to be the best Ford, and that’s something that right now is our goal. We’re not the top Ford, so we need to be the best Ford, and if we’re not the best, we need to at least be in the top two or three. Instead, we’ve been one of the worst two or three every single week. I think from that side of things, just manage our expectations. We know we don’t have the speed to go win, but let’s try to be the best Ford. And once we’re the best Ford, then we can focus on winning more.
“That’s all we’re trying to do right now is re-establish everything and lay a new foundation. Obviously, we got off the rails a little bit these last two or three months, and we just need to re-establish what a baseline setup is and rebuild from scratch again, truthfully. So it’s going to take time. That’s the frustrating thing – as a race car driver, you want to see results in two or three days, especially when you bring in new change and things like that. But truthfully, it is going to take time.
“At this point, if we can run better than 30th, it’s an improvement (compared to) what we’ve had the last couple of weeks. We just need to make our car better each and every week, and hopefully a month from now we’ll be up there in the top two or three Fords. But right now, we have to manage our expectations. We have a lot to learn right now, not only from the car standpoint but even a team dynamic standpoint. Things are so different, bringing a new guy in… We’re just trying to learn.”