Briscoe dominates chaotic General Tire 200 at Sonoma Raceway
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Don Lex (LuckyDuckImages.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
SONOMA-In most years, many of the NASCAR Cup Series upcoming stars use the Saturday ARCA West race as a chance to get some extra track time.
With that, it’s also expected that the Cup Series drivers are the top performers in the race.
But what Chase Briscoe did in Saturday’s General Tire 200 just dominated the field. Briscoe led all 51 laps in the race. At one point in the race, Briscoe held a 16-second advantage over the field. In all, there were 7 cautions for 21 laps on the day.
Pretty much the only thing Briscoe didn’t lead was the practice/qualifying session earlier in the day. He had control up until the final five minutes when Jake Drew and Todd Souza put up fast lap times.
The race also had nine cars finish off the lead lap.
“It was nice,” Briscoe explained. “It was good to just go out there and run clean laps. In practice, it was hard to learn the racetrack because you’d catch guys and they’d mess up your lap up and you’d get out of rhythm.”
Another reason Briscoe should feel happy is that he also got to run some laps in a race before the Cup Series race on Sunday. The green flag will be Briscoes first time on course with his Cup Series car.
“It was huge. I felt like the other tracks honestly practice and qualifying would be beneficial,” Briscoe added. “But this is the one track where more than any other I wanted to be sure that I could run something and just never being out here. It’s one thing to learn an over on-the-go, but it’s another thing to learn a road course. It’s definitely challenging and this is the only track on the schedule that I’ve never been to.”
Zane Smith came in as probably the biggest competition to Briscoe. However, before the race went green his car had an oil hose blow, which ended his race before it ever started.
The biggest comeback of the day came from Souza. Souza had a start violation, which led to having to perform a pass-through penalty and shot him to the back of the field. He was able to bounce back for a fifth-place finish.
Despite the fact that series points leader Ty Gibbs was in Mid-Ohio for the NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Saturday, he still leads the ARCA Menards Series West standings.
Historic Trans-Am race goes down to the wire
In Saturday’s first of two 30-minute Historic Trans-Am race, Richard Goldsmith edged out Jim Hague in a photo finish. Goldsmith drove a 1970 Dodge Challenger in the race.
The race was headlined by Fox Sports play-by-play announcer Mike Joy. In the first of his two races this weekend, Joy brought home his 1966 Ford Mustang in 18th.
Joy and the rest of the Historic Trans-Am field will be back in action on Sunday at 10:30 am for another 30-minute race.
The Fox Sports 1 broadcast will start with NASCAR RaceDay at 11:30 am and the Toyota/Save Mart 350 will go green at approximately 1:14 pm. The race will also be broadcasted on Performance Racing Network.
