August 16, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Chase Briscoe suffers fiery setback at Richmond

Chase Briscoe couldn’t believe his misfortune at Richmond Raceway on Sunday.  

The sophomore Cup driver at Stewart-Haas Racing had finally found his comfort zone at the tricky three-quarter-mile track. Briscoe finished ninth in Stage 2 and was running in the top five prior to pitting with 100 laps remaining in the Federated Auto Parts 400. 

That's when he smelled smoke. Then there was fire in the cockpit of the No. 14 Ford Mustang—a driver’s worst fear.

“I thought it was a brake fire at first,” Briscoe said. “Then they told me it was an exhaust fire. I thought I was fine. Then all of a sudden it started shooting flames inside of the car. I had one hand on the window net and another on my belts. I was probably five seconds away from getting out, because it was getting to the point where there was so much smoke that I couldn’t breathe.” 

For the third-straight race, teams have experienced a rocker box catching on fire. The rocker box houses the car’s exhaust system and runs along the frame rails behind the front tires. At Indianapolis, Chris Buescher’s box caught fire after contact with Bubba Wallace’s car. Buescher recovered and finished 10th. Joey Logano also experienced the same issue at the end of the Indy GP after finishing sixth in the race. He addressed the issue the following weekend at Michigan.

"How many times in racing have we said, ‘Boy, I’ve never seen that before,’ and we’ve been doing this forever," Logano said. "We still say that, so definitely some new things there, considering it happened to a few cars I’d say it probably needs to move up the list of figuring out a fix to that because you don’t really want the cars burning up from the inside. 

"I don’t want a flammable race car, so if we can figure out how to fix that, it would be great.”

That same weekend at Michigan, Cole Custer’s box caught fire after a left front tire went flat—but since the fire occurred on the driver’s side of the car, flames never reached the cockpit.

While Briscoe was the third Ford driver to experience a rocker box fire in as many weeks, his crew chief Johnny Klausmeier says the manufacturer coincidence is simply that.

“It is random, but I mean I don't see anything that is different there that would point one way or another,” Klausmeier said. “At the end of the day, everyone's rocker boxes are same. They run the same way. Everyone runs the same hose pipe to it. So I don't know why it would just be a Ford thing. 

“I know we were running the fence and there weren't many people running the fence and that's where all the rubber is going to be collected. So maybe there's just a lot of debris that got through the screen and collected on it.” 

Initially, the team warned Briscoe of the fire. When the flames were no longer visible, the team believed the fire had gone out. By Lap 303, Briscoe reported the blaze was intensifying. He came back to the pits on Lap 305.

“Some type of debris was collected in there,” Klausmeier added. “You can't see anything from the outside, but there's something just in front of the exhaust pipe. They (NASCAR) added a bezel there. We were actually running the top and maybe there was some rubber clumped up that can't get out now. So they're going to look at NASCAR, sort of work together with us, and come back and look at the parts and see what happened. 

“We really won't know until we get it fully apart, but definitely there was fire and then we got the fire to go out and then it was either the plating or the insulation or some type of aluminum shielding was on fire after that.” 

NASCAR has been working with the teams to eradicate the issue of the exhaust blowing back into the rocker box and becoming problematic. NASCAR Cup Series Director Brad Moran addressed the issue on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday morning. 

“Obviously, we've been looking at it very closely,” Moran said. “We know what created some of the issues at Indy--crushing in the rocker panel and moving the exhaust creates a few other issues. We’ve come up with the first part of a multi-stage correction--which seemed like it helped. Unfortunately, the 14 had some issue where they did have something start on fire. We had our R&D folks there yesterday. I haven't got the full update but we're working on it.  

“Obviously, it's on our top priority to figure (it) out. It’s a different issue than what we had at Indy, but we're still looking at it to get it corrected. It's part of a multi-stage, so we could have changes coming as early as this weekend, as well as for Daytona. So yeah, we've got a big group of engineers working on that.” 

The fresh air coming through Briscoe’s helmet allayed some of the smoke from the fire. After the team extinguished the flames and fresh air was able to circulate in the cockpit, things returned to normal. Unfortunately, Briscoe lost three laps in the pits and dropped to 27th. Although he gained four spots over the final 90 laps, it was not the result Briscoe had hoped for with two races remaining before the Playoffs.

“I was just bummed, because we had a really good car,” said Briscoe, who finished 23rd. “That’s my worst track, and I thought we were going to finish in the top five. When it started getting bad, I knew my day was for sure over.”

The next five races will be critical for the No. 14 SHR team. Briscoe is currently 17th in the Cup standings, but 12th on the Playoff grid. While he should be a lock to transfer into the Playoffs, advancing beyond the first round could be sketchy.

“Yeah, it's really frustrating,” Klausmeier said. “We just haven't been able to put a whole weekend together--a smooth weekend together in a long time. We’ve had speed at times to do it. We just haven't been able to put it together. 

“Richmond is probably his least favorite track, but he was doing a great job running the top and everything. We'll just shake it off and take away the positives that we can take away from it and just try the momentum and get to the playoffs.”