NASCAR star Chase Briscoe had two dreams as a kid growing up in Indiana.First, make it to the big leagues and become a NASCAR Cup Series driver. He notably has done that in the most unlikeliest of ways, and is now a frequent contender for NASCAR’s current top team, Joe Gibbs Racing.But the second goal had been elusive until now: To own a full-time sprint car team that toured dirt tracks around the country, just like former NASCAR stars Kasey Kahne and Briscoe’s childhood hero, Tony Stewart. Briscoe can remember watching those teams’ haulers pull into dirt tracks and recalls thinking: “That’s the coolest thing ever. They own a full-time sprint car team and they race in NASCAR on Sundays.”As of this week, Briscoe can now say he does the same.Ty Gibbs survives late charge from Christopher Bell to win at Iowa SpeedwayChase Briscoe Racing has acquired the sprint car team owned and operated by Pennsylvania driver Brent Marks, who competes on the High Limit Racing circuit. Notably, the purchase comes with what High Limit calls a “franchise” — essentially a “charter,” the concept which gained much notoriety during the NASCAR antitrust lawsuit last fall and was implemented by High Limit last year.It’s one thing to own a sprint car team; it’s another to attempt to do it in a financially sustainable way instead of recreating the money pit that so many motorsports team owners have fallen victim to throughout the decades.“I’ve been trying to put something together on my own end for the last two years, trying to find sponsorship and funding to try to get it to full time,” Briscoe said. “Truthfully, it was just hard to do. But on the High Limit deal, if you have a (franchise), you’re guaranteed X amount of money coming in. So it just makes it more feasible to find sponsorship to cover the full thing, because you know you have X amount coming in no matter what.”Briscoe’s team, which also has financial backing from businessman and former NASCAR driver Bobby Hillin Jr., now becomes the second entity to purchase a franchise in High Limit after the system was formally announced last March. The NASCAR team Spire Motorsports bought a franchise last December, and now Briscoe has formally taken ownership of Marks’ team midway through this season.The team debuted with its new name, branding and sponsor (Magical Vacation Planners, a former sponsor of Briscoe in NASCAR) this week at the Knoxville Nationals.High Limit was initially formed as a complementary midweek series to the famed World of Outlaws but since has become a full-fledged rival. The two series compete for full-time drivers and are on different streaming services, with High Limit pitching increased financial stability for a sport that is typically a money-loser for team owners.Five-time World of Outlaws champion Brad Sweet and his brother-in-law Kyle Larson, the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, founded High Limit in partnership with the streaming service FloRacing. The series has since reached an agreement to simulcast some races on FS1, which reached 260,000 viewers (a big number for sprint car racing) during a Thursday night race last month.“The viewership has truthfully been way better than what everybody expected from that standpoint,” Briscoe said. “The unique thing is with how much they run in the midweek, it just gives such an opportunity for FS1 or some other broadcaster to try to pick up midweek sports, and that really positions High Limit in a good place.“We weren’t going to do it if we couldn’t get a (franchise) and what we feel like the value could potentially turn into, along with how much easier it makes it to sustain the team having one of those.”Chase Briscoe and Brent Marks discuss the deal at a recent press conference. “I’ve been trying to put something together on my own end for the last two years,” Briscoe said. (Jeff Gluck / The Athletic)Briscoe first looked at trying to earn a “free” franchise through on-track performance, which is how High Limit has awarded the original 10 franchises starting this season. There is a pathway for another five to be awarded over the next two seasons, with a cap of 15 total.But that would have required fielding a team full-time, with none of the financial guarantees, and Briscoe couldn’t find the funding to make it happen for this season. So he called at least half of the 10 charter-owning teams to inquire about a possible sale.A couple of teams were on the fence about selling, he said, but “for the most part, everybody wanted to ride it out and see what happens.” Briscoe had not reached out to one of the team owners, Marks, when he saw a May announcement on social media indicating Marks had seemingly parted ways with a new investor just months after announcing their deal.Briscoe saw his opening. Although he had never actually met Marks and didn’t know him personally despite being in the sprint car world for years, he obtained Marks’ phone number to make a cold-call pitch via text message.Marks, still raw from seeing his prior partnership dissolve, looked at the text and thought: “What kind of joke is someone playing on me right now?”But it wasn’t a joke, and Marks quickly realized Briscoe was dead serious about wanting to buy the team and franchise while still having Marks drive and run the team the way he wanted. They spoke for an hour in their first conversation, and ultimately it all left Marks thinking, “This is the time.”“This is the right opportunity for me to take the next step in my career and take that load off my shoulders,” Marks said. “We’ve always had to get things done on our own, and I worked extremely, extremely hard to get to this point.”Marks has been very hands-on with his team and has even been his own crew chief while winning races. The investment should allow Briscoe to give Marks, known as the “Myerstown Missile” and currently sixth in the High Limit standings, more resources to help find the speed he needs to win regularly.And even after Marks, now 35, eventually steps away from full-time competition, Briscoe has told him there will be an opportunity to continue managing the team. The trust level was there quickly, even though the two men had actually never met in person until the day of their first news conference together last week in Iowa.“I didn’t want to just sell the team and then put myself in a bad position,” Marks said. “That’s one thing that made me really comfortable talking with Chase — he assured me this is a long-term goal for him and the organization and where we want to take it. And he sees that vision with me at the helm.”Larson, the High Limit co-owner, said Briscoe and Hillin’s desire to invest in the series by purchasing a franchise is exactly what the series has been looking to see as proof of concept.“It’s awesome, you’ve got Spire getting into High Limit (and now) Chase Briscoe,” Larson said. “It just shows the health of our series and the sport of sprint car racing as a whole. It’s exciting news, we’re all happy about it, and we’re looking for a lot more continued success for that team.”