Former Champ Briscoe and Current Contender Eckes Establish Themselves as Ones to Watch in Future

A former ARCA Menards Series champion and a current championship contender both made the statement that they will be contenders in the upper levels of stock car racing for years to come over the weekend.

Chase Briscoe, the 2016 ARCA Menards Series titlist, drove past Christopher Bell with seven laps remaining and recorded his second career NASCAR XFINITY Series victory in Saturday’s U.S Cellular 250 at Iowa Speedway. Bell had dominated from the pole, leading 234 laps before Briscoe, who started alongside on the front row, drove past with just a handful of laps to go.

Briscoe is a third-generation open wheel racer from Mitchell, Indiana. He moved to North Carolina with nothing but a dream, landing at Cunningham Motorsports – now Chad Bryant Racing – in 2015. Briscoe did odd jobs for the team and slept on the couch in the team’s shop all the while begging team owners Kerry Scherer and Briggs Cunningham for an opportunity to drive one of their racecars. That opportunity came at Lucas Oil Raceway. He qualified fifth and ran well all night long, crossing the finish line tenth. That earned him another shot at another Indiana short track. He qualified seventh at Salem Speedway in September and finished an impressive fifth.

With two top-ten finishes in two starts and having proven his work ethic to the team owners, Scherer and Cunningham gave Briscoe a shot at a full season in 2016. He was strong out of the box, with three General Tire Pole Awards in the first five races of the season. Briscoe didn’t record his first career victory until the tenth race of the season at Winchester Speedway – another Indiana short track – but it was the first of four consecutive wins. He followed with victories at Iowa Speedway, Lucas Oil Raceway, and Pocono Raceway. He closed the season with two additional wins at Chicagoland Speedway and Kansas Speedway. His dominance throughout the year put him 535 points ahead of runner-up Tom Hessert III at season’s end.

From there, Briscoe spend a season in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series driving for Brad Keselowski Racing. Briscoe earned his first series win in the final race of 2017, and the final race for Keselowski’s race team. With his Truck Series team closing its doors, that could have meant his opportunities were at an end. But his performances over the previous two seasons had impressed the racing executives at Ford, and they put him in a developmental ride with Roush Fenway Racing and another at Stewart-Haas Racing.

Briscoe sparkled in his limited runs with Stewart-Haas, earning his first career win in dominant fashion in the XFINITY Series’ first visit to the Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He led 33 of the race’s 55 laps, winning by 1.4 seconds over noted road racer Justin Marks. The win was the second NASCAR victory of the season for Briscoe, who had also taken the checkered in a fender-banging last lap duel with another former ARCA Menards Series champ, Grant Enfinger, in the Gander Trucks’ Eldora Dirt Derby.

While Briscoe is a former series champion, Christian Eckes put himself in the thick of the 2019 ARCA Menards Series championship fight with his second win of the season in Saturday’s FORTS USA 150 at Pocono Raceway. Eckes followed up Friday’s win with a fourth-place finish in Saturday’s NASCAR Gander Truck Series Gander RV 150 at Pocono. Eckes, driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports, qualified a disappointing thirteenth but he steadily made his way through the field to earn his first career NGOTS top-five finish.

Eckes sits just 80 points behind his Venturini Motorsports teammate Michael Self with just five races remaining in the season. With wins last season at the dirt mile at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield and at Lucas Oil Raceway, Eckes has reason to be confident.

The season started brightly for the Middletown, New York native, with a fourth-place finish at Daytona and a third-place finish at Five Flags Speedway boosting Eckes to the championship lead. But an overnight illness before the third race of the season at Salem Speedway put Eckes on the sidelines. He was involved in an accident in the next series race at Talladega Superspeedway, finishing last in the 26-car field. In two races, Eckes gave up over 300 points to Self. Consistency over the summer stretch has narrowed that gap considerably, giving Eckes a realistic shot at the title with a quarter of the season yet to run.

Eckes will continue his attempt to reel in Self for the points lead in the Allen Crowe Memorial 100 at the Illinois State Fairgrounds on Saturday August 18. Practice is set for 10 am ET, with General Tire Pole Qualifying scheduled for 12 n ET, and the green flag for the 100-mile headliner to follow at 2:30 pm ET. The race will be televised live on MAVTV. ARCA for Me members can access live timing & scoring, live track updates and live chat at ARCARacing.com. New users can register for free with a valid email address at ARCARacing.com/login. Please visit TrackEnterprises.com for ticket information.