Needing nothing short of a win to make the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, Chase Briscoe did just that and claimed a crown jewel in the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway in the process.
It wasn’t just that Briscoe, crew chief Richard Boswell and the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 14 team won but how they did so with a company set to shutter at the end of the season, numerous manufacturer resources shut off and needing to hold off one of the all-time greats, who was equally desperate, in Kyle Busch.
“I was waiting for him to do obviously whatever he had to do to get in the Playoffs, too,” Briscoe said. “Kudos to him for racing me super, super clean. Yeah, the fact that both of my Darlington wins have came trying to hold off Kyle Busch is pretty cool from just a personal note because that guy is one of the greatest of all time.”
It also took outdueling one of the other greats in Kyle Larson, who led 263 laps before losing the spot on the penultimate restart.
“I don’t necessarily think we did anything wrong,” Larson said. “It’s just kind of racing. You know when Ross stayed out it kind of got us a little bit off our gameplan. I chose the bottom, the front row, and Ross just got a good launch and he got clear down in front of me and kind of pinched my air off through [turns] 1 and 2. The No. 54 was able to hang on my right side and I just was stalled out on the backstretch. Briscoe did a great job and cleared all of us.”
The duel came at one of the all-time great NASCAR facilities and in a finish befitting of that legacy.
“Once I got in the wind of the No. 14 car, I couldn’t do anything with it,” Busch said. “Just lost too much grip and the wake on these things — [Briscoe] wasn’t blocking or anything, I just lost grip. That was all I had.”
Now, despite all odds, Briscoe and Boswell are going to race for a championship at least for the next three weeks. They have Atlanta, Watkins Glen and Bristol to either once again win or rise above the elimination cut line. It’s a mission shared by 15 other contenders at the close of the regular season.
The rules for the next nine weeks are familiar — win and advance.
“I think when you back him in a corner like that, we’ve seen it in the past with his career, kind of the path he’s been on, when you back him in a corner, he’s dangerous,” Boswell said. “I love seeing this Chase Briscoe. I cannot wait to race with this Chase Briscoe for the next 10 weeks.”
Kyle Busch denied again
For the second week in a row, with nothing short of a win accomplishing the goal, Kyle Busch was denied the win in the most dramatic fashion possible.
He was leading on the final lap at Daytona when Harrison Burton got pushed by him, ultimately finishing second and was unable to take advantage of fresher tires to drive by Briscoe in the closing laps. His winless drought is now 47, the longest such of his career, and he misses the playoffs for the first time since 2012.
But he had a chance.
“We put ourselves in this position, and through much of that race, [I] didn’t think we had a shot to get ourselves a win and punch our way through,” Busch said. “But [fresh] tires there and having an opportunity also just put wind in our sails.”
He has 14 finishes of second or third the past three years, a fact he is keenly aware of.
“I’ve gone back and looked at the stats, and the amount of second and third-place finishes I have in this Next Gen car is disgusting,” Busch said. “It’s really, really getting old and it really, really sucks that I can’t come out on top and get myself some more trophies and some more checkered flags for my team, team Chevy, all of our sponsors and everybody that supports us and gets us here.”
And in this moment, the most painful of them has to be the photo finish defeat at Atlanta to Daniel Suarez. A difference of centimeters denies him a playoff berth for the first time in over a decade.
Field of 16 is set
The format gets really intense but really simple.
There are three races coming up and Atlanta, Watkins Glen and Bristol. If anyone in the Round of 16 win, they advance to the Round of 12 automatically. The lowest four winless drivers in points are eliminated.
The 12 who advance face a three-race round across Kansas, Talladega and the Charlotte Roval. If any of the remaining 12 eligible drivers win, they advance to the Round of 8 automatically. The lowest four winless drivers in points are eliminated.
The eight who advance face a three-race round across Las Vegas, Homestead-Miami and Martinsville. If any of the remaining eight eligible drivers win, they advance to the Championship Race automatically. The lowest four winless drivers in points are eliminated.
The Final Four face off amongst themselves at Phoenix and the highest finisher of the four wins the championship
Buescher, Wallace knocked out
A reminder of the emphasis on winning, there were 14 drivers who qualified into the Round of 16 on wins and just two made it on championship points and Ty Gibbs and Martin Truex Jr. were ninth in tenth in the standings.
In other words, Chris Buescher and Bubba Wallace, 11th and 13th, were eliminated because drivers like Daniel Suarez (17th), Chase Briscoe (18th), Austin Cindric (19th) and Harrison Burton (34th) all won their way into the 10-race elimination showdown.
Buescher, who has the fourth best average finish (13.7) in the Cup Series was in until Briscoe bumped him out by winning, something he had not done this year.
“Can’t control everything, right,” Buescher said after climbing out of the car. “Tried to control what we could and it wasn’t enough. To come back and get a really good finish out of it is great, just wasn’t working out with the way the rest of the race played back. We’ll go back and watch it and see how it unfolded, ultimately, just didn’t get it done this year.”
He managed the 21-point gap to Bubba Wallace for the final spot as well as he could, despite being involved in a crash late in the race and did what he was supposed to but Briscoe made it a mood point.
“We knew we needed to get to the end of the night and we’d get better and pretty much what we did, started coming around and had good speed there at the end,” Buescher said. “But I got fenced there and had to come fix it and put tires on and it got us off sequence. Didn’t even hit anything in the big wreck but just a roller coaster of a night.”
He missed winning Kansas, and making the playoffs as a result, by this much.
Wallace led 37 laps from the pole but was also involved in a big melee with 22 laps remaining but that also proved to be a moot point when Buescher won.
“We weren’t good enough, simple as that; last two-thirds of the race I said I hope the 11 (Denny Hamlin) and 5 (Kyle Larson) stay up there because the 14 (Briscoe) is fast,” Wallace said.
“Who won? The goal post moved again. They were better and deserving so congrats to the 14. We come back tomorrow and got to hit it harder than we did. That’s sports. You go up and down and round and round. Got to put this weekend behind and put the disappointment behind of not making the playoffs and go give your all for the next 10.”
Regular season champ Reddick
The consequences may not be felt until later but Tyler Reddick claimed the regular season championship over Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott.
The regular season end results matter because the playoffs are seeded based on playoff points earned throughout the season. They are earned through winning races, winning stages or finishing inside the top-10 of the regular season championship standings
5: Race wins
1: Stage wins
15: Regular season champion
10: Regular season, second
8: Regular season, third
7: Regular season, fourth
6: Regular season, fifth
5: Regular season, sixth
4: Regular season, seventh
3: Regular season, eighth
2: Regular season, ninth
1: Regular season
At the start of each round, every driver that is still championship eligible has their points reset with all playoff points to date added to that reset number, including any playoff points earned during playoffs.
In other words, Reddick winning the regular season championship was the equivalent of three additional races wins with Larson earning the equivalent of two race wins, a difference of five playoff points earned.
Elimination over the course of any given round is usually in the single digit number of points so every point earned is crucial. But for Reddick, the regular season championship comes with its own trophy and is a point of pride to the 23XI Racing No. 45 team as well.
“It’s just a testament to all the hard work that everyone at 23XI, here at the racetrack, week in and week out, back at Airspeed, puts into this,” Reddick said. “We’re on year four of their goals, right? It’s just been really, really fun the last two years to be a part of this process, building up to where we want to be.
“I mean, it takes a lot of hard work to be consistent as we’ve been through the summer stretch. Both years really feel like we had rocky starts to get going. It’s nice to be able to get to where we did in the middle of the year and start thinking about points. I think it really helped us just continue to be more consistent, get us in the right mindset for these Playoffs, just managing risk versus reward. We’ll be doing it three races at a time here soon.”
Reddick overcomes illnes
During the broadcast of the race, it was reported that Reddick was severely ill and that he was both throwing up and having … uh … bowel movements inside the car.
The team tried to feed him Tums through the window during the pit stop, which he fumbled in the car and even blended Imodium inside a water bottle for him to take that way.
The regular season championship is why it was so vital for him to stay inside the car and finish the race, and he scored a top-10 through it all.
“That’s the worst I’ve felt. I don’t know, I guess just a stomach bug or something,” Reddick said. “My son was feeling a little down last week at Daytona. We had to take him to the infield care center after the race. He was struggling pretty bad on race day, on Saturday.
“Yeah, I feel like midday Friday, started really struggling. I was hoping Saturday morning it would be gone. It was terrible on Saturday. Woke up Sunday with the same hope it would be gone again.
“Felt good pretty much all the way up until the race. I don’t know, just must have been the bump off of two or something. It just really, really got bad by the end of stage one. It just stayed there the rest of the way.
“Just really thankful that a lot of great people on our team. They were feeding me the right stuff in the car to help me manage it best as I could. Just smart people. Able to put the right stuff in my drink to help calm my stomach down. At one point, I was just waiting to puke all over myself. Thankfully they kept that from happening. A whole lot of other gross stuff.”
So he didn’t puke?
“I thought I was going to, I really did at the end of stage one, as soon as the yellow came out,” Reddick said.
So nothing out the other end either?
“I held on for dear life all night. I thought it was going to happen, but….” Reddick said.
“I actually really just wanted to get it out because it was really, really bad. I took some Imodium at the infield care center earlier. That was the worst thing for me because I couldn’t get anything out that I wanted. It was just a rough night.”