Darlington Raceway did it again.
On Sunday night in the Southern 500, multiple NASCAR Cup Series playoff drivers encountered trouble. In a way, it’s fitting and expected, considering the opening round of the postseason takes place at one of NASCAR’s toughest racetracks. But this time around, it started on the first lap with Josh Berry losing control and bouncing off Tyler Reddick.
Berry finished last, 38th. The damage to his Wood Brothers Racing Ford required extensive work in the garage, and he missed the entire first stage of the race. He rejoined the race in the second stage, but had no ground to gain as far as positions went. But he did earn an extra point for putting down the fastest lap in the race.
“It’s kind of hard to even really know, but the car bottomed out five or six times and just wrecked,” Berry said. “It was definitely unexpected. We didn’t really fight that too bad in practice. I saw a replay of it when I was sitting in the car while they were fixing it … you could tell that it bottomed out four or five times, and you can’t save them when they’re like that.”
The other drivers who had issues Sunday night:
- Alex Bowman had a 40-second pit stop in the first stage when his team had issues with the air gun on the right rear.
- Denny Hamlin had a slow pit and lost all of his track position under a lap 152 caution.
- Christopher Bell hit Carson Hocevar on pit road, under the caution for Hocevar, and damaged the front of his car.
Hamlin rebounded for a seventh-place finish. He was one of four playoff drivers who finished inside the top 10.
Ross Chastain finished 11th, and Austin Cindric finished 12th. Cindric was the highest-finishing Team Penske driver. Then, there was a group of playoff drivers in close proximity to each other in the finishing order, with Chase Elliott in 17th, Ryan Blaney in 18th, Kyle Larson in 19th, Joey Logano in 20th, and William Byron in 21st.
“It was a really long night,” Elliott said. “Yeah, we had clawed our way up to the top 10 and tried to run really long on that one run. Everyone was being real aggressive with short-pitting so we tried to run long. And then yeah, as soon as we did that, the caution came out. It was honestly laughable at that juncture. Just came in and had an issue on pit road, had to put our heads down and grind out a top last. Just keep pushing at it. It’s been a long night for sure. We’ve got to put our heads together to try to figure out how to be better at Gateway and how to go faster.”
“I have no idea,” Blaney said of why the first playoff race also bites drivers. “Everything that happened to us tonight was somebody else’s fault, so I don’t know. Maybe they’ve got to figure it out a little better.”
Said Logano, “We just didn’t go fast. Just couldn’t get a handle on the car. Either the front was plowing or the rear was loose and sometimes I had both at the same time. It’s not what we were expecting. This has been a good track for us over the last 10 years. We just missed it. It was surprising. I thought we’d be able to run in the top 10 just off of history, but everyone got better, and we didn’t.”
And it was a blunter assessment from Bowman on the night, “It certainly wasn’t a lack of effort, but just a [expletive], unacceptable day on all fronts. We weren’t great when we unloaded, didn’t qualify well, and got caught up in that first (caution) deal and lost the little bit of track position that we had. And then it kind of fell apart from there. Honestly, without all of th at, we were just really, really, really slow. So, not for a lack of effort by any means. The guys all work super hard back at the shop, and everyone is putting in a lot of work, but we just missed it this week. I haven’t had a chance to look at it, but I could see my teammates, so I assume we all missed it a little bit and just a [expletive] day. But it could have been a lot worse, for sure.”
