Chase Briscoe joins touring Sprint Car ownership ranks

Brent Marks Racing has now become Chase Briscoe Racing in the High Limit Sprint Car Series.

The NASCAR Cup Series contender, now in his second year driving for Joe Gibbs Racing has a second-generation non-wing Sprint Car background and has continued to support the discipline as a team owner in recent years.

Meanwhile, Marks has struggled to balance running a family team alongside trying to add to a driving resume that already includes the 2022 Kings Royal and Historical Big One at Eldora, plus wins in the Port Royal Tuscarora 50 and Williams Grove National Open.

But Marks split with business owner Allen Murray, who provided vital support to the team, last year and it’s just been a process for the 35-year-old to simultaneously try to grow the business and chase wins.

Enter Briscoe.

The six-time Cup Series race winner hadn’t even met Marks in person until Saturday at Iowa Speedway but reached out over the phone during the spring. He saw a business opportunity for a discipline he cares about.

“I mean, I would be lying if I said my heart’s still not in the non-wing side, just growing up in Indiana, but to be involved in Sprint Car racing and for it to be a viable business, you have to be in a winged Sprint Car tour,” Briscoe said. “When you look at what High Limit is doing with their TV deal on FS1, Amazon Prime and the Flo package, and then you throw in the charter, the franchise thing, there is a lot of growth that is still there.”

Marks said he thought it was a joke when he was told that Briscoe wanted to talk to him.

“But once we started talking and I just seen how serious he was about this and wanting to do this, I was like, I think this is the time,” Marks said of selling his team. “This is the right opportunity for me to take the next step in my career and take that load off my shoulders because I’m a race car driver.

“This is what I want to do. … but we’ve always had to do it on our own and I worked extremely hard to get to this point. And now I just see it coming around and having Chase take this step is awesome.”

For Briscoe, he saw an opportunity when Spire Motorsports purchased the High Limit Racing charter from Jason Meyers Racing.

“I just feel like (Jeff) Dickerson has always been kind of ahead of the curve on a lot of that kind of stuff,” Briscoe said. “And so I talked to him kind of right after he’d bought that one and started to make phone calls.

“And truthfully, Brent was probably the last person I called because I thought he would never sell because it was their own family operation.”

But losing Murray changed the game for Marks.

“And yeah, after that announcement that he made, I texted one of my buddies and just said, “Hey, can you send me Brent’s number,” and it obviously worked out,” Briscoe said. “So yeah, I would say for me, like I said, I always have wanted to be an ownership side, especially in the Sprint Car world. And yeah, the High Limit Series and what they’re doing, it’s just a really exciting thing to be a part of from the fan side and now on the ownership side.”

Briscoe is thinking ahead to how the franchise’s value could grow.

“When you look at 2031 and what the next contract could bring, especially with the FS1 numbers, because I think all of us were probably a little bit surprised at how well it’s done,” Briscoe said. “I mean, to have 300,000 viewers nearly on FS1 is a huge deal. So just excited to see what it can grow in the future.”

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