Soon the Brickyard’s Gasoline Alley will shudder to the thunderous roar of the Next Gen car as NASCAR rolls into Marion County. Treating fans to the yearly spectacle of the Verizon 200 Cup Series race, this year’s race will up the ante with the participation of Shane van Gisbergen and Brodie Kostecki. While everything is fit as a fiddle in NASCAR’s alley, Tony Stewart’s Stewart-Haas Racing team stands out as an exception.

Unable to match up to its rivals’ pace, SHR finds itself in a slump and has yet to claim a race win. Now that the regular season is almost nearing its conclusion, SHR’s #14 driver, Chase Briscoe, has given up on his 2023 Cup Series endeavors.

Chase Briscoe opens up about his 2023 season struggles

Fielding four full-time cars, SHR’s 2023 season has been nothing short of challenging. While the #4 driver, Kevin Harvick, finds himself sitting in the playoff bubble, the other three are way beyond the 20th rank on the Cup Series standings. But no one on Tony Stewart-owned team has had it as bad as Chase Briscoe.

Although his 2023 season started out with a disappointing DNF at Daytona, the #14 driver delivered three consecutive top-5 finishes in the month of April. Once he had enough points to sit pretty in the playoff bubble, bad luck struck Briscoe as he tumbled down NASCAR’s leaderboards. The ongoing issues with Ford didn’t make it any easier, as the SHR #14 driver is now ranked 31st on NASCAR’s leaderboards.

Speaking to media personnel before the Indianapolis Cup Series race, Chase Briscoe was asked about his feelings regarding the 2023 season. “It’s definitely been an interesting season, to say the least. I feel like I’ve never had a season where it’s been either really really good day or really really bad day. We either run top-5, top-10 or we run 30th or worse. There’s just no in-between. So that part’s been just extremely head-scratching…”

We know that this season, especially if we don’t win one of these next three weeks, we’re not really racing for anything as far as you know playoffs or points go.” the SHR #14 driver said, giving up hope for the 2023 season.

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While Chase Briscoe has given up on the current season, the SHR driver is looking forward to turning his luck around 13 weeks from now.

Tony Stewart team’s No. 14 driver dons a positive outlook

With Richard Boswell replacing John Klausmeier as Tony Stewart-owned SHR’s #14 team’s crew chief, Chase Briscoe hopes the outcome of the 2024 season will be much different than the current season. Although the 2023 regular season is still in play, Briscoe no longer associates himself with the ongoing championship chase.

Focusing his full attention on how to extract better results in 2024, the SHR driver said, “We have 13 weeks to make ourselves better before the 2024 season and really kind of find a foundation and just what we need to do as a team. So I think that’s our main focus, is just continuing to try to get better.”

He further added, “As much as we would love to throw a Hail Mary and try to win one of these next couple of races, and even the ones in the past couple weeks, surely we haven’t had the speed to do that. So I think first priority is finding the speed to be able to throw Hail Mary’s, and then try to just build our team to be the best as it can be going into 2024.”

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After Chase Briscoe revealed his approach this season, fans are bound to be disheartened by the news from their hero.