NASCAR: Why one driver was happy Halloween fell on race day

NASCAR driver Chase Briscoe reflected on this past Halloween and his partnership with Huffy’s amid his new role in life as a father.

After suffering through multiple miscarriages in 2020, NASCAR Cup Series driver Chase Briscoe and his wife Marissa welcomed Brooks Wayne Cunningham Briscoe into the world on Saturday, October 2, 2021.

Brand sponsor Huffy’s has been helping to ease the difficult journey and transition for Chase as he settles into “dad life”, and he got to celebrate this past Halloween by jetting off on Huffy’s newest Motoric Fat Tire E-bike.

Ahead of Halloween last month, Chase rode through the streets with a trail of several children following behind — something that he hopes to do one day with his own son.

Huffy’s always proves to be the perfect trick-or-treat ride and/or add on to your costume with themed Disney, Marvel, Nickelodeon, Star Wars bikes and much more.

Overall, Huffy’s has played a key role in easing this “dad life” transition for the rookie driver of the #14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.

“They’ve given us some cool gifts, for one,” Briscoe told Beyond the Flag. “But I think honestly probably the other thing is a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, whenever we filmed that Halloween video, just having all the kids over here. I don’t have a ton of experience with four, five, six-year-olds, and I think we had 10 of them over here, and they were all trying to get candy and going nuts.

“So I think just having that experience. And the Huffy brand is not only for kids, but people my age, adults, and even senior citizens. But just everything that Huffy has from top to bottom I think has just been a really good experience, and obviously there is a really big kid presence. So just having kids come up…even on race weekends, I’ve had kids come up and talk about how they have a Huffy bike at home and ride it, so it’s pretty cool.”

The fact that Chase became a father during a busy NASCAR season made things a bit more challenging, but he is grateful that he and his wife were able to welcome their newborn son with just six races remaining on the 36-race schedule as opposed to 15 or 20.

“It’s been tough for sure,” he said. “I feel like I was fortunate it was toward the end of the season. I only had five or six weeks to do it. But it definitely is a big adjustment from a preparation side and a schedule side. A lot of things change whenever you have a newborn. I would say it’s definitely not been easy, but at the same time, it’s been a little bit easier than I thought it would be.

“So it’s been a really good balance between my wife and I, trying to look after [Brooks] and take care of him throughout the day and throughout the night. We’re slowly figuring it out.”

Of course, while Chase was able to hang out with all of those children ahead of Halloween, his celebration of Brooks’s first Halloween on the day itself was pretty nonexistent, given the fact that the Cup Series ran a race at Martinsville Speedway that afternoon and Chase was there to compete.

“We didn’t go do anything; I left at I think seven in the morning for Martinsville and didn’t get home until around nine o’clock at night,” he explained. “So I didn’t get to enjoy the festivities.”

But there was a huge bright side to that which he hopes to cherish for years to come.

“But, you know, luckily, he’s so young, it’s not like he was gonna go trick-or-treating anyways!” he said.

Fortunately for the Briscoe family, Halloween fell on a Sunday and a race day this year with their son not even a month old. As Brooks gets older and is able to actually participate in the festivities, race day will not conflict with the holiday.

“I’m sure my wife would have much rather me been here to still hang out on the front porch and pass out candy and things,” he admitted. “But for Brooks’s sake, I think now, the next five, six years, I won’t be at a race track since this race was on a Sunday. So I’ll get to experience that and next year he’ll be old enough to dress up and somewhat know what’s going on, so it’ll be a lot of fun.”

And hopefully the year after that, the year after that, and the year after that (and the year after that). Halloween doesn’t fall on a Sunday again until 2027, and then not again until 2032.

While he has learned a lot in his rookie season in the Cup Series, Chase is looking forward to the offseason for more than one reason.

“I think just getting to spend more time at home,” he said. “During the season, we’re super busy obviously. Even in the offseason, we’re still extremely busy. This offseason will probably be the busiest offseason I’ve had in the last four or five years, just with all the testing we’re going to be doing for the new car coming out.

“But just being able to have a few less commitments throughout the week, and being able to be here on the weekends; weekends I probably won’t have much going on. Just being able to have that time while Brooks is growing — crazy, it seems like every day he grows more and more. My wife and I were just talking the other day about how he is a month old [on Tuesday, November 2], and it doesn’t even seem possible. So just being able to have that time with him and family and enjoy the holidays will be really nice.”