DARLINGTON, S.C. — From the first lap, Sunday’s Southern 500 taunted, tormented and tested many of the Cup playoff drivers.
A first-lap crash, a 40-second pit stop and a collision on pit road ruined the night for some playoff drivers.
Ten of the 16 playoff drivers finished outside the top 15. Four of those playoff drivers placed 29th or worse in a race won by Chase Briscoe, who advances to the next round.
The woes began when Josh Berry, starting third, lost control of his car in Turn 2 of the opening lap and crashed.
“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.”
Berry spent an hour in the garage for repairs and finished last in the 38-car field. He left the track last among the 16 playoff drivers, 19 points below the cutline.
Berry in early playoff trouble after Lap 1 spin
Josh Berry’s No. 21 snaps and spins into Tyler Reddick on Lap 1 of the Southern 500, putting his hopes of advancing into the next round of the playoffs in jeopardy from the start.
Alex Bowman started 29th — last among the playoff drivers — and his night soured with a 40-second pit stop during a green-flag stop on Lap 66 of the 367-lap race.
An air hose got disconnected from the pit box and the team thought it was an air gun failure before the issue was discovered. Bowman eventually fell two laps down.
Problems on pit road set Bowman back at Darlington
Problems with the air gun force Alex Bowman and Co. into a 40-second pit stop, setting the No. 48 back in the first Cup playoff race at Darlington.
He made them up but struggled in the final stage and finished 31st, two laps down. Bowman left Darlington 19 points below the cutline. Crew chief Blake Harris declined comment after the race.
Also below the cutline is Austin Dillon (-8 points) and reigning champion Joey Logano (-3 points ). Dillon struggled with his car’s handling and finished 23rd. Logano was not competitive, placing 20th.
“Just never really had speed,” crew chief Paul Wolfe told NBC Sports. “Honestly, I wouldn’t say any of the Penske cars were great. We didn’t really have speed. We never really could get the balance for what (Logano) was looking for.”
The Joe Gibbs Racing star won the legendary NASCAR race for the second consecutive year.
Christopher Bell had his race turn on Lap 154 when he and Carson Hocevar collided on pit road. Hocevar had brought out the caution for a spin. Bell entered pit road sixth and Hocevar was last of the 24 cars on the lead lap.
They made contact as Bell exited and Hocevar went to enter his stall. It is a crew chief’s responsibility to clear a driver to exit their stall.
Adam Stevens, crew chief for Bell, explained his perspective of what happened:
“In my mind if (Hocevar) was caught up (to the back of the field), he should have been what I would say is tucked in his box before we were ready to leave,” Stevens told NBC Sports. “I didn’t realize that he wasn’t caught up and I haven’t had a chance to know how close he was or how close he wasn’t, or how fast he was going or wasn’t going, but I do know that he caused the caution.
“He was not going to beat a single car off of pit road, no matter how their fast stop was. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense to be pitted up there with championship cars in that particular situation when you can’t even beat a car off pit road by virtue of you coming in as far behind the field as you did and then to not acquiesce to the cars that are leaving.”
The contact damaged Bell’s splitter and his car’s underbody. The result was a 29th-place finish that put him 10th in the standings, eight points above the cutline.
Joe Gibbs Racing star leads more than 300 laps, holds off Tyler Reddick.
Shane van Gisbergen finished 32nd and holds the final transfer spot with two races left in the opening round (Gateway and Bristol). An ill-timed caution in the final stage trapped him two laps down.
Chase Elliott finished 17th — best among the Hendrick Motorsports cars — and left Darlington six points above the cutline.
“It was a long night,” Elliott said. “We clawed our way up into the top 10. We went long on that one run in the second stage. Everybody had gotten really aggressive shorting it, so we just thought we’d tried to run long and see what happened.
“As soon as we did that and got eight or 10 laps in, the caution came out. We came in and ended up having an issue on pit road and, unfortunately, it all kind of happened at the same time on that next cycle. We just had to put our heads down and grind it out.
“We just have to keep pushing at it. We just have to put our heads together and try to execute better at Gateway.”
Darlington proves to be difficult playoff opener
Darlington was not kind to a handful of playoff drivers in the Southern 500 as Josh Berry, Alex Bowman, Denny Hamlin, and Ryan Blaney are among those with eventful nights.
Ryan Blaney finished 18th, snapping his streak of six consecutive top 10s with a night where he said “just about everything that could go wrong tonight went wrong.”
Still, he ended the night seventh in the playoff standings, 19 points above the cutline.
He lost 11 spots after the Bell/Hocevar incident on pit road because Hocevar’s car got turned and faced Blaney, blocking him in his stall as the field drove by. That was only part of Blaney’s woes.
“There were multiple instances, one on pit road,” he said. “We had to start in the back and then getting spun off turn four killed the splitter, and then we came from the back to 19th and then the caution came out as soon as we got to pit road and sent us all the way back again. … Everything that happened to us tonight was somebody else’s fault.”
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