DARLINGTON, SC – Chase Briscoe knew he was carrying the weight of everyone at Stewart-Haas Racing heading into the final laps Sunday night at Darlington Raceway, and he couldn’t have been happier.
“I feel like I skate better under a lot of pressure,” Briscoe said. “I love the pressure moment in Game 7.”
He made a spectacular wide pass of three drivers late in the race to win the Southern 500, qualify for the playoffs and give Stewart-Haas Racing one last chance to record its championship record before the team closes its doors after the season.
Briscoe and his team head into the postseason relishing that pressure in the final days of the program that won NASCAR titles with Tony Stewart in 2011 and Kevin Harvick in 2014.
Briscoe received a call from his owner Stewart and the drivers came by to congratulate him on the win.
Briscoe took the lead with a three-way pass, overtaking Kyle Larson and Ross Chastain and ultimately overtaking two-time series champion Kyle Busch.
On a final restart on lap 17, Briscoe pulled away and held off Busch, who, like Briscoe, needed a win to reach the postseason.
“We just won the Southern 500!” an emotional Briscoe said on the car radio.
Briscoe is prepared for more milestones with Stewart-Haas.
“Yeah, that group, the day we found out the team was no longer going to exist, we went to the board of the shop, looked at each other and said, ‘We’re in this until the end,'” Briscoe said. “I’ve been saying all week, ‘We’ve got one more bullet in the barrel.’ That bullet hit.”
Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Ty Gibbs and Martin Truex Jr. secured the final two postseason spots in points, while Bubba Wallace and Chastain, who were both within 27 points of the cut-off line at the start of the race, did not win the race.
Briscoe’s dramatic maneuver spoiled another dominant run at Darlington by Kyle Larson, who led 263 laps but was never the same after being passed by the winner. Larson was trying to pass Tyler Reddick and claim the regular-season points title – and the 15 bonus points the leader gets – but he was one point short.
Christopher Bell finished third, followed by Larson, Chastain, Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Corey LaJoie and Reddick.
Truex, racing his final season before retiring, needed only a solid, trouble-free run on the Too Tough To Tame track to advance, but instead he left his fate to others when he crashed out on Lap 3, slid his car up and hit reigning NASCAR champion Ryan Blaney.
But after Larson’s victory in the second stage – he had also won the first stage – NASCAR announced that Truex had secured a spot in the 16-driver playoff field.
Bubba Wallace was the first driver out of the playoffs to start the weekend and got a boost when he took his first pole at Darlington on Saturday. But while 23XI co-owner Michael Jordan watched from his pit box, Wallace was involved in a six-car crash with 24 laps to go.
Jordan, wearing a headset and watching intently, threw his hands in the air and bowed his head when he saw that Wallace was involved in the accident.
“Wasn’t good enough for 16th place this year, I hate that,” Wallace said. “It’s annoying to say, but it wasn’t for lack of effort.”
Busch failed for the second week in a row, losing to another winless driver this season. Last week at Daytona, he was beaten by Harrison Burton.
“I hate it for our guys,” said Busch, who won titles in 2015 and 2019. “This is something to build on and get better. We just missed a lot at the beginning of the year and in the middle of the year to be in this spot, looking in from the outside.”
Reddick’s Race Tyler Reddick battled a stomach illness as he held off Larson to win the regular season. He said his son was sick last week at Daytona and, as most parents know, that makes Reddick prone to illness.
Reddick felt it coming on Friday afternoon and thought it had subsided by Sunday morning. Then it hit with full force as the race began. Reddick thanked his crew, who provided him with medication and fluids to get him through.
“At some point I was just waiting to puke all over myself,” he said. “Luckily they stopped that.”
Playoff field
Reddick won the regular season title, Larson finished second. The rest of the playoff field: Chase Elliott, followed by Bell, William Byron, Blaney, Hamlin, Brad Keselowski, Logano, Austin Cindric, Daniel Suarez, Alex Bowman, Briscoe, Gibbs and Truex.
The first round starts in Atlanta, then goes to Watkins Glen and Bristol before the field is reduced to 12.
Honor Cale
Cale Yarborough, the Hall of Fame driver who died on New Year’s Eve at age 84, was memorialized at his hometown racetrack when Dale Jarrett drove the 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass that Yarborough used to win his third straight Cup Series title in formation laps in 1978. Yarborough won five of the Labor Day weekend crown jewel races, to Jeff Gordon’s six, at Darlington after growing up there, a few miles away.
Next
The playoffs begin next Sunday in Atlanta, with the first round continuing in the following two weeks in Watkins Glen and Bristol.
