There are no good accidents on a NASCAR racetrack, but the one Tyler Reddick described to his pit crew at Sunday’s Southern 500 was certainly preferable to a crash.

“I’m throwing up, shitting my pants, all of it,” a seriously ill Reddick told his crew chief during Sunday’s race in Darlington, South Carolina.

After receiving medication during a pit stop, Reddick fought his way to a 10th-place finish despite his illness and secured the NASCAR regular season points title.

Interestingly, he has since retracted his confession during the race. Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports reported that Reddick denied defecating in his car during the race, but admitted he was battling an upset stomach.

“My bad, false alarm!” he told reporters, as quoted by Noah Lewis of TSJ Sports.

Regardless of whether he soiled his overalls or not, Reddick was able to celebrate the season win with Michael Jordan, the co-owner of 23XI Racing.

Regular season champion Tyler Reddick and his car co-owner Michael Jordan in Darlington

Tyler Reddick drives through Turn 1 during a NASCAR Cup Series car race at Darlington

As for the rest of the race, Chase Briscoe passed Kyle Larson and Ross Chastain to take the lead, then passed two-time series champion Kyle Busch to win on Sunday, qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.

On the final restart of the regular season finale at Darlington Raceway, Briscoe pulled away after 17 laps to beat 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’s Stewart-Haas team announced its closure earlier this season. Briscoe gave the proud program something worth fighting for during the final 10 weeks of the season.

“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.”

An exhausted Tyler Reddick is seen during practice before the Southern 500 on Sunday

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 tried to pass 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 in the hands of others when he crashed on Lap 3, sliding his car up and hitting 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 Jordan sat in his pit box watching his two 23XI drivers, Wallace was involved in a six-car accident 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, which I think is terrible,” Wallace said. “It’s a real bummer to say, but it wasn’t for lack of effort.”

Kyle Larson, driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet, and Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 HighPoint.com Ford, drive during the NASCAR Cup Series Cook Out Southern 500

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, watching from the outside.”

Reddick won the regular season title, with Larson finishing second. The rest of the playoff field consists of: Chase Elliott, followed by Christopher Bell, William Byron, Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski, Joey 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.

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 won his third straight Cup Series title with introductory laps in 1978. Yarborough won five of the crown jewel races on Labor Day weekend at Darlington, to go with Jeff Gordon’s six wins, after growing up there just a few miles away.

The playoffs begin next Sunday in Atlanta, with the first round continuing in the following two weeks in Watkins Glen and Bristol.