NASCAR Michigan starting lineup again features Briscoe on pole

Maybe the third time is the charm for Chase Briscoe.

This is now the third race in a row that the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 team has scored the pole on Saturday but it did not translate to truly race contending performances on Sunday in the Coca-Cola 600 and then at Nashville last week.

“Yeah, that’s a great question,” Briscoe said. “That’s something that we haven’t been able to do so far so yeah, I don’t know. It’s just been a lot of different things. Truthfully, like every week, it’s just been something different. Sometimes it’s me not doing my job on the race track or you know making a mistake on the restart or we’ve had bad pit stops. It’s just been a multitude of things.

“I don’t know, it’s hard to pinpoint what we really need. The biggest thing is just to maintain our track position start to finish. We’ve been able to start up front which is awesome, right? But to be able to stay up there, (it) just takes a full, complete day and it’s something that we haven’t we’ve been able to do. Hopefully tomorrow will be that day. Truthfully, all three weeks, I would say this weekend has been the least favorite car I’ve had in race trim, but sometimes, that can be a good thing.”

This pole even caught Briscoe off guard.

“I would say this is definitely the least confident I’ve been going into the last three weeks,” Briscoe said. “The last two weeks, at least we went out super late I think we’re the third or fourth last car out, which is typically an advantage. With us all running wide open, it’s not as big an advantage. Truthfully, I knew the Toyotas were going to be really good. I knew the No. 19 car has been good, but I didn’t I did not anticipate getting the pole, especially when we all started running wide open.

“Like when I saw Noah (Gragson) run wide open, I thought there was no way I would be on the pole. I think it was (Las) Vegas this year, the whole field ran wide open and all of us were kind of like 15th at best. I just figured with how Las Vegas had went, we were probably going to be in the same kind of boat here, but for whatever reason (pause), the Joe Gibbs (Racing) guys have done a really good job of being ultra-aggressive and learning things, so hopefully you know that’ll apply tomorrow.”

To his point, his car is falling off on long runs in a way that doesn’t entirely give him immediate confidence for the race, but not a lack of confidence that crew chief James Small can continue to tweak on it and give them what they need.

“Definitely coming here (Michigan) with the new tire, we thought that we were probably going to run wide open, but you never really know until you get here,” Briscoe said. “And I think Noah (Gragson) was the first car out that ran wide open. So, pretty immediately, I knew that the whole field was going to run wide open. I called Noah right before I got in the car actually and I was like, ‘how easy was it was it? Like a Daytona Talladega style wide open?’ He said, ‘yeah man, it’s easy wide open.’ I did not feel that way.

“My car was definitely kind of on edge. I was on the verge of lifting a couple times. Christopher (Bell) I thought had me beat, he had to lift off of (turn) four and that was the same spot where I thought I was going to honestly probably hit the fence. So yeah, it was not as easy as I thought it was going to be, but the speeds I think was coming from the corner speeds. We’re running wide open now, so the corners (are) faster and that translates down the straight away. Every time we come here, this is the one place that certainly gets your attention just from a speed standpoint. There’s not a lot of places where we’re over 200 mph, so it it’ll be intense tomorrow for sure.”

There were a trio of tire issues during practice for Shane Van Gisbergen, Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney but they all appeared to be air pressure related with teams trying to figure out this new tire combination for Michigan.

This is the same right side tire from last year but the left sides only debuted two weeks ago at Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600 and that was a 1.5-mile track compared to this high speed two-miler.

Kyle Busch will enjoy his best starting position of the year in second alongside Briscoe. Championship contenders Denny Hamlin and William Byron line up from the second row ahead of Kyle Larson in fifth.

“Felt good there today and held it wide open in qualifying, as did the whole field,” Larson said. “Hopefully, we can find a little more turn tomorrow. I think all of us being very similar on speed it will be difficult in traffic so having some turn will be a benefit. That’s our main objective at this point.

“But overall happy to qualify fifth there. That’s honestly a little bit better than I thought we would be. Now we’ll rest up and study and try to be ready for tomorrow.’’

Starting lineup