CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Over the course of the last week, everybody has made their best guess at what will happen throughout the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
But what do the drivers themselves think will happen across the next 10 weeks of postseason racing?
During NASCAR Playoffs Media Day at the Charlotte Convention Center on Wednesday, the 16 eligible playoff drivers were all granted anonymity to answer a series of eight questions, allowing their most candid responses. Listed alphabetically, the drivers polled were Christopher Bell, Josh Berry, Ryan Blaney, Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe, William Byron, Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Chase Elliott, Shane van Gisbergen, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace.
Drivers were encouraged to answer and given the option to elaborate on answers if they wished to do so. Some drivers even provided multiple answers to a particular question. Across a wide range of topics, some questions had clear answers. Others highlight the uncertainty that exists entering the playoffs. Without further ado, here is what drivers had to say:
1. Besides yourself, who do you consider the championship favorite?
Sean Gardner | Getty Images
The man who won the Regular Season Championship is also favored by his peers to go all the way and win the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Championship.
Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron earned eight votes from the playoff roster as the favorite to win the championship this year, a result that would end the reign of Team Penske’s three consecutive titles. However, six of the 16 drivers also pointed to Penske’s Ryan Blaney to earn his second Cup championship to follow his 2023 ascension.
Byron is a two-time winner this year and locked up the regular-season title with one week to spare. Blaney rocketed to second in the final regular-season standings and also ended with two wins, one at Nashville Superspeedway and another at Daytona International Speedway. But despite earning a collective 14 votes, the sentiment among drivers is still strong: There is no clear favorite.
“Honestly, I don’t know. No one’s had a breakout year,” one driver said.
Others agreed, unbeknownst to them:
“I don’t have a favorite.”
“I have to pick one?”
“That’s tough.”
Three drivers gave multiple options for their votes. One voted for Byron and Christopher Bell; another voted for those two and Kyle Larson. One more voted for Byron, Bell and Denny Hamlin.
“I would say Byron — well, I don’t know. A Penske car if they make it to Phoenix,” said the driver who voted for Byron, Bell and Hamlin. “I think Byron’s put together a really strong year. Hard to argue against Denny. And I think Bell’s always got a shot as well.”
Another driver cast a single vote for Byron, but added: “That’s tough. I mean, it’s pretty even at the top.”
Rounding out the vote-getters was Tyler Reddick, who earned a single ballot.
Driver
Number of votes
William Byron
8
Ryan Blaney
6
Christopher Bell
3
Denny Hamlin
2
Kyle Larson
1
Tyler Reddick
1
2. Besides your own, which crew chief do you think can most impact the race with a strategy call?
Nigel Kinrade Photography | Team Penske
Unsurprisingly, this question produced one of the most definitive answers of the survey, with Paul Wolfe getting the nod with eight votes as crew chief of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford and driver Joey Logano.
“That’s probably the hot answer,” one driver said. He was right.
Wolfe’s bold strategy calls have perfectly placed Logano into race-winning contention in multiple scenarios when it seemed the No. 22 Ford was down and out. Last year, a last-ditch effort to leave Logano out in quintuple overtime at Nashville earned the group its only win of the 2024 regular season to earn a playoff spot. And at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the Round of 8, another fuel-strategy play leaped Logano into Las Vegas Victory Lane and into the Championship 4, in which Logano earned his third NASCAR Cup Series title at Phoenix.
Wolfe wasn’t the only crew chief to receive votes here, though. Rudy Fugle, head of Byron’s No. 24 team at Hendrick, had the next highest tally with three votes.
“I feel like Rudy’s pretty good at that with William,” one driver said. “They do a great job.”
“I guess Rudy has done it recently with his fuel thing at Iowa,” another said.
Adam Stevens, crew chief of Bell’s No. 20 Toyota, received one vote, as did 23XI Racing’s Charles Denike with driver Bubba Wallace and Ross Chastain’s crew chief Phil Surgen.
Two drivers declined to answer.
“Some people do different things, but they’re not right,” that driver said. “I don’t know if I have an answer. Is ‘no answer’ an answer?”
For our purposes, yes. No answer sufficed.
Crew chief
Number of votes
Paul Wolfe
8
Rudy Fugle
3
No answer
2
Adam Stevens
1
Charles Denike
1
Phil Surgen
1
3. Which playoff driver races you the hardest?
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This question produced the only tie of the questionnaire, making Bubba Wallace and Joey Logano co-winners of this question with four votes apiece.
One driver particularly struggled with this question — which is a good thing for their sake — before ultimately casting a vote for Logano.
“I’m on pretty good terms with most of them right now,” he said. “I mean I think this is really good that I’m struggling to pick this.”
Ross Chastain was a close third with three votes, but three separate drivers received single votes: Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson and Chase Briscoe.
“Briscoe will race you hard at all times in every situation,” said Briscoe’s lone voter. “Just a hard racer, for sure.”
There were two competitors, however, who opted for no answer on this question — one with no elaboration, and another citing the current intensity of modern Cup racing.
“We all race each other like [expletives] now,” that driver said.
Driver
Number of votes
Bubba Wallace
4
Joey Logano
4
Ross Chastain
3
No answer
2
Denny Hamlin
1
Kyle Larson
1
Chase Briscoe
1
4. Which playoff track are you most looking forward to?
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
An array of race tracks found themselves on the list, but none could beat the “Lady in Black.”
Darlington Raceway, host of Sunday night’s playoff opener (6 ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), led the way with six votes in Wednesday’s survey. A fair assumption could be made that this answer was popular thanks to Darlington being the first up in the postseason, evidenced by one driver’s statement — “the next one” — tallying one vote for the track “Too Tough to Tame.”
Bristol Motor Speedway and Kansas Speedway were each tied at three votes apiece, in part due to drivers’ past successes at those tracks. Two drivers even commented: “All of them.”
“Honestly, all of them,” one driver said. “The only wild card for us is Talladega (Superspeedway), but that’s a wild card for everybody. But [I’m] looking forward to every track on the schedule.”
Phoenix Raceway, site of the championship race, received two votes as well, with Las Vegas — the Round of 8 opener — receiving just one vote.
Track
Number of votes
Darlington Raceway
6
Bristol Motor Speedway
3
Kansas Speedway
3
Phoenix Raceway
2
All of them
2
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
1
5. Which playoff round is the most challenging?
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The Round of 8 was the runaway winner, earning the single-most votes of any category in this year’s survey with a whopping nine tallies.
That penultimate round of the postseason features the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway, 2.66-mile superspeedway Talladega and the 0.526-mile Martinsville Speedway.
That this particular section of the playoffs has most drivers’ attention should come as very little surprise. This year marks Talladega’s first so late in the postseason push to determine the Championship 4. The Alabama behemoth fosters pack racing via drafting, keeping the 36-plus-car field bunched tightly together and inherently heightening the odds of a driver getting collected in someone else’s mistakes.
Each of the four rounds of the postseason received votes, though, so not everyone was intimidated most by the Round of 8. The opening stanza — the Round of 16 featuring Darlington, World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway and Bristol — was tied for second with three votes along with the Round of 12, which is made up by New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
One driver opted to hold the sheet of questions throughout this interview and saw a reminder of what tracks made up each round. Reminded that the Championship 4 at Phoenix does count as a playoff round of its own, that driver cast his vote for the finale as the most challenging of the playoffs.
Playoff Round
Number of votes
Round of 8
9
Round of 16
3
Round of 12
3
Championship 4
1
6. Which non-playoff driver do you think could play the biggest spoiler role in these races?
James Gilbert | Getty Images
Surely, Chris Buescher isn’t one for consolation prizes, so this honor likely won’t mean much to him. But seven of the 16 playoff drivers pointed to the driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford as the driver on the outside who could find a way to spoil the postseason all over again.
Buescher was the driver highest in points following last week’s race at Daytona who did not advance to the postseason thanks to this year’s 14 winners throughout the regular season. No one will be shocked if Buescher finds his way to Victory Lane over the closing 10 weeks of the season. He and his team did it just last year by winning at Watkins Glen International in the first round of the 2024 playoffs. This year, they have shown consistent speed, particularly in recent weeks, and Buescher nearly won the 2024 spring race at Darlington before late contact with Reddick.
Kyle Busch, the two-time Cup champion, still has the respect of his competition as well by earning five votes from his fellow racers. He’s won 63 times at this level but zero since the summer of 2023, extending his career-long winless streak to 83 races. One driver said it best, though: “You can never count Kyle Busch out.”
Some drivers wondered aloud exactly what a “spoiler” meant in this scenario — and we left that up to their interpretation.
“See, does a spoiler cause chaos? Or does the spoiler have to win?” one said. “Because there’s plenty of those guys that cause chaos.”
Enter our third-place vote-getter, Carson Hocevar, who received one vote by a driver seeing his name on a list of non-playoff competitors and exclaiming: “That guy. He’ll crash into someone.”
Hocevar is still seeking his first career Cup win but has found himself in the mix multiple times this season, catching both the eyes and ire of his fellow racers.
Two drivers cast multiple votes rather than narrowing their answers to one. One voted for an RFK duo of Buescher and Ryan Preece (another racer looking for his first Cup win), and another voted for a combo of them and Busch. Also receiving votes were RFK co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski and Trackhouse’s Daniel Suárez.
Driver
Number of votes
Chris Buescher
7
Kyle Busch
5
Carson Hocevar
3
Ryan Preece
2
Brad Keselowski
1
Daniel Suárez
1
7. Who will be the biggest surprise to advance out of the Round of 16?
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
With six votes in his favor and 22 playoff points to his credit, Shane van Gisbergen narrowly won this category, receiving six votes.
The Trackhouse Racing rookie has, in one sense, had a remarkable season by winning a rookie-record four races, all coming at road courses. The counter to that, however, is that the No. 88 Chevrolet driver ranked 25th in points before the playoff reset, largely due to his inexperience on ovals in the Next Gen car.
This opening round features a daunting trio of tracks in Darlington, Gateway and Bristol. The New Zealand native earned a top-20 finish at Darlington in April and has expressed his excitement for that particular weekend. However, he has never raced at Gateway before, and his Bristol debut in April was over before halfway due to an early crash. He enters the postseason 16 points above the provisional cutline.
“I don’t think he will [advance], but if he does, SVG,” one driver said in casting their vote.
Second in this category was Austin Dillon, the driver of the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing entry and recipient of four votes. Dillon won the regular season’s penultimate race at Richmond Raceway to clinch his playoff spot, but enters the playoffs 15th of the 16 drivers, two points beneath the cutline, with four drivers set to be eliminated from the postseason after Bristol. Contrary to the lack of confidence in the above SVG ballot, one driver was quite sure of Dillon’s advancement.
“It may be a surprise to some, but I see Austin Dillon advancing,” he said. “He’s good at Darlington.”
Three votes went the way of Josh Berry, the third-place sitter. Berry won at Las Vegas in the fifth race of the season to lock himself and the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford into the playoffs. The sophomore Cup driver finished third at Darlington in the spring of 2024 and has two 12th-place finishes at Bristol in three starts at the “Last Great Colosseum.”
“If we’re going off of performance, I look at the 21,” one driver said. “For whatever reason, they started out the year really hot and just have been OK at best as of late.”
Said another: “People are writing off Josh Berry a lot. I think he’s going to make it out.”
Austin Cindric also received two votes in this section, while Alex Bowman received one.
Driver
Number of votes
Shane van Gisbergen
6
Austin Dillon
4
Josh Berry
3
Austin Cindric
2
Alex Bowman
1
8. Who will be the biggest surprise to be eliminated early?
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
Five drivers said that Tyler Reddick will be an early out in this year’s postseason run.
Reddick was the Regular Season Champion in 2024 and stormed his way to the Championship 4. But the results haven’t been quite the same for the No. 45 team at 23XI Racing in 2025. The team has yet to win a race this season and was in jeopardy of missing the playoffs altogether if things had gone differently in the regular-season finale at Daytona. Reddick enters the playoffs in 14th place in the playoff standings, tied with Josh Berry at one point beneath the cutline.
Christopher Bell, interestingly, received three votes along with 2020 Cup champion Chase Elliott for a second-place tie in this category. What’s more eye-catching about this is that Elliott ranks first in average finish this season at 12.0, with Bell second at 12.5.
Bell won three races in a row at the beginning of the season but has not won since March. The No. 20 Toyota driver finished second three races ago at Watkins Glen International but hasn’t scored a top-five finish at an oval since Kansas in May. Elliott snapped a 44-race winless streak in late June with a victory at EchoPark Speedway near Atlanta, but has just one top five and three top 10s in the eight races since that breakthrough win.
Joey Logano, the defending Cup Series champion, received two votes as a possible early elimination, with William Byron and Chase Briscoe also receiving one vote each. One driver declined to answer.
And yes, you read that right — there is technically one vote for Byron, the Regular Season Champion and the guy who enters tied with teammate Kyle Larson for the series lead heading into the playoffs. How?
“Is it mathematically possible for the 24 [to go out early]?” one driver asked. “Yeah, if he DNFs… 24.”
The track’s abrasive surface grinds tires to shreds over the course of long runs, demanding finesse behind the wheel. A transition from daylight to nighttime through the South Carolinia sunset alters the finicky handling characteristics of that worn-out asphalt. On average, it takes 4 hours, 15 minutes to complete 367 hot, exhausting laps. That all combines to make it one of — if not the most rewarding race to win in NASCAR.
Just ask Chase Briscoe, the defending winner of the Southern 500. This year, he’s driving the No. 19 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. Last year, he was driving the No. 14 Ford for the outgoing Stewart-Haas Racing, ultimately earning SHR’s final Cup victory.
“You definitely don’t realize how big of a deal it is when you do it. But a year removed, it definitely feels like a bigger deal,” Briscoe reflected on Saturday. “You know, I still have a group chat with the 14 guys, and we were literally talking about that this morning — just how, when you look back at what we did a year ago, it’s crazy. Like we were proud then and thought it was a big deal. But now, being a year removed and all of us are at different places, it really kind of sank in, I think, for all of us coming back here a year later.
“It’s special coming back here. I definitely have confidence every time I come here, just in general, but especially now more than ever, just with knowing that this race is as grueling as it is and knowing that I’ve been able to do it before. There’s just a confidence that comes along with that. So hopefully we can do it again this weekend.”
His Joe Gibbs Racing teammates share that love for the track dubbed “Too Tough to Tame.” Ty Gibbs, driver of the team’s No. 54 car, relishes the opportunity to wheel a stock car around these hallowed grounds as the track celebrates its 75th anniversary. The challenge provided by its unique design — a wider, sweeping radius through Turns 1 and 2 compared to a far tighter left-hander through Turns 3 and 4 — necessitates a certain level of driver skill the 22-year-old adores.
“This is one of the greatest tracks there is, for sure,” Gibbs said. “This track is awesome. There’s so much character to it. I hope that they don’t ever try to touch it, unless the thing is falling into the ground. This one of those places that you can make a difference as a driver, same as Richmond. You’re not just relying on the car. You can just make it happen yourself.”
The other element to this crown jewel that separates it from others? A win here for any of the 16 playoff contenders would launch them into the Round of 12 of the postseason without having to worry about the next two races in the opening stanza of the playoffs.
Postseason contenders dominated Saturday’s qualifying session, earning each of the top dozen spots on the starting grid. But if you want to win at Darlington, buckle up. It’ll be a brutal bout.
“At the start of this race, there will be some sort of sunlight, and then we’re going to go into full night,” polesitter Denny Hamlin said. “So you’re going to have to build some adaptability in your car. And that’s something that we always plan for the end of the race, and we figure out how to make it work at the very beginning. And so certainly, when you start up front like we are, that’s going to help us band-aid the car for a little while until it comes in.”
What do crew chiefs have in focus to win Sunday’s race?
As heated as the drivers’ compartment will get Sunday evening, there appears to be a reprieve from Mother Nature in sight.
A hallmark of the Southern 500’s Labor Day Weekend tradition is typically a sweltering heat that beats down on fans, drivers and pit-crew members alike. This year seems to offer a break, with an expected green-flag temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit and a cool 69 degrees at the 10 p.m. ET hour, according to AccuWeather. Crew chiefs aren’t meteorologists, but a good understanding of how the weather impacts their vehicles’ handling will be key in determining Sunday’s outcome at Darlington.
Richard Boswell returns as the reigning winning crew chief of this race after scoring the victory with Briscoe in 2024. Now atop the pit box for Austin Dillon and the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing entry, Boswell and Dillon have been hard at work, fine-tuning those details as they return as playoff underdogs.
“There’s never enough time, right?” Boswell told NASCAR.com. “Like he’s constantly learning me; I’m constantly learning him. And we could work together for the next 10 years and I think we would say the same thing. Are we at a deficit to guys that have worked together three or four years? Yeah, but that’s always going to be there, right? So it’s really just a matter of continuing to build off of what we’ve had from every single week. I can tell you I’m way more confident in what he needs this race at Darlington than I was with the spring race.”
First-year crew chief Miles Stanley and driver Josh Berry locked themselves into the playoffs in the fifth race of the season with a win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Berry has run well at the “Lady in Black,” evidenced by a third-place finish in last year’s spring race during his rookie campaign. But that remains his only finish better than 30th in four starts. Stanley and Berry are in a similar position to Boswell and Dillon — both first-year pairings set to begin their first postseasons together.
But Darlington presents its own challenges that each shot-caller will need to be aware of and be willing to adapt to throughout the course of 500 miles under the lights, particularly with such severe tire wear expected as most Darlington races produce. More tire wear equals more pit stops.
“A lot of stops, making sure the pit crew stays focused,” Stanley told NASCAR.com. “They stay on their job, keep their head in the game, locked in the whole race. It’s a long race. I mean, it’s tough to make sure you maintain that track position and everything. Inevitably, you’ll fall back at some point, whether it be a pit cycle or you pit under green (and) the caution comes out immediately after — whatever the case may be. So you just need to keep everybody’s head in the game, stay focused and try and execute the whole race.”
Both teams enter the postseason below the provisional cutoff line to advance into the Round of 12, which will be set after this three-race stretch from Darlington to Gateway to Bristol. Boswell, Dillon and the No. 3 team enter 15th in the standings, two points out.
“This place is brutal, right?” Boswell said. “They don’t call it the ‘Lady in Black’ for nothing. And really, the biggest thing for us is we just can’t beat ourselves. We just execute a clean race, we’re going to be in contention for a top 10 at the end of the day.”
Stanley and Berry are 13th, one point out and carrying the same mindset.
“If we execute here the best we can, which is not a stretch by any means, we’ll be in really decent shape going into the next couple weeks,” Stanley said.
Leading a lot doesn’t often mean winning a lot. According to Racing Reference, the driver who led the most laps in the Southern 500 has finished 22nd or worse in three of the event’s last five runnings.
He may not be the favorite to win, but watch out for …
ERIK JONES. It’s hard to look away from a two-time winner of the Southern 500, especially as Jones enters with the momentum of a Daytona top five in hand. Two of the team’s three top fives have come on drafting tracks this season, but Jones is a contender every time he gets to the “Lady in Black.” The No. 43 Toyota could find a way to play spoiler again in the final crown-jewel race of the season.
Fantasy update
NASCAR Fantasy Live expert Dustin Albino provides insight for your Sunday lineup.
As expected, the 2025 playoff drivers came to play in the opening practice and qualifying sessions of the postseason at Darlington. The top 12 drivers in the starting lineup are held by drivers fighting for the Bill France Cup. Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe put together monster qualifying laps after fighting the balance of their respective cars during practice. Long-run pace is crucial at the 1.366-mile oval, and playoff drivers William Byron and Ryan Blaney had loads of it. I’ve bumped Blaney into my lineup, replacing Chris Buescher.
Lineup: Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Tyler Reddick, William Byron, Ryan Blaney.
Our biggest pieces of the week — get covered for race day from all angles.
• NASCAR at Darlington: Key info, qualifying reports and more from doubleheader weekend | Read more
• Plenty to say: See some of the best quotes from NASCAR Playoffs Media Day | Read more
• Respect the legends: Jeff Gordon recounts what made him electric as all-time winningest Southern 500 racer | Read more • Racing Insights: Projected results for Sunday night’s grueling crown jewel | Read more
• Bubble Watch: Capitalizing is key in Southern 500 playoff opener | Read more • Turning Point to Darlington: No playoff contender is safe at “Lady in Black” | Read more
• At-track photos: Scenes, sights from Darlington to Xfinity Series race in Portland | View gallery
• Paint Scheme Preview: Bright designs for under the lights | View gallery
• Power Rankings: Evaluating the 16 playoff racers | This week’s top 20
The NASCAR Cup Series and Craftsman Truck Series travel south this weekend with a trip to the legendary Darlington Raceway, while the Xfinity Series heads west for some Portland International Raceway action. For the Cup Series and Truck Series, this weekend marks the start of the playoffs for each. Bookmark this page and come back often for your race-week essentials — from links to qualifying order, average practice speeds, results and more.
Race day: Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET on The CW. The categories listed below will be filled out with links as the information becomes available.
Tires: Six sets for the weekend (three new race sets, one set transferred from qualifying and two for practice). Teams will also have four wet-weather sets.
DARLINGTON, S.C. — As he’s been all season, Corey Heim was the car to beat on a muggy Saturday afternoon at Darlington Raceway. While Layne Riggs put the pressure on the 2025 Regular Season Champion, a downed tire with 20 to go put Heim on point to win a ludicrous eighth race of the season and opened the door for other playoff contenders to land big points day.
Daniel Hemric and Grant Enfinger strung together clean days behind Heim to round out the podium in the Sober or Slammer 200, while defending champion Ty Majeski recovered from a flat tire in Stage 1 to come home fourth to begin his run for a second-straight title.
“It was just cool to see this 19 team find another level today — our most highly executed weekend of the year,” Hemric said after finishing second Saturday. “Proud of the timing of that for sure. Just important for this team to come together and we did that today. We found another level and it’s good to maximize that.”
The opening stage became one of attrition for the playoff field during a 47-lap stretch from green to stage checkered.
Kaden Honeycutt and Chandler Smith were the first to take a hit as they had tires go down. Smith slammed the wall in Turn 1, ending his day, while Honeycutt continued on but couldn’t inch his way back to the front.
Majeski was the third postseason driver with an early-race obstacle, but was able to put himself in position to take the wave around for Stage 2 and get back on the lead lap. The No. 98 ThorSport Racing driver could’ve opted to limp it around the closing laps of Stage 1 and risk going down multiple laps, but the championship mentality and experience of the Wisconsin native opted to put himself and his team in a better position.
“When things like that happen, the biggest thing is to not let the hurdle get too tall, right? So you have to minimize the damage,” Majeski said after the race. “It’s a hard thing to pull in when you have a flat tire, especially when you’re that close to the end of the stage. If I could just limp it around and stay on the lead lap, that would be better than doing a green-flag pit stop. But, yeah, I’m glad I pulled down. It would have been catastrophic one more corner so yeah, just minimizing the damage.”
Enfinger, the long-time Truck veteran, gave a fair assessment of his day. Despite not being able to battle with Heim and Riggs for the lead, the No. 9 CR7 Motorsports wheelman gave his team a high grade for delivering all race long and putting Enfinger in a spot to score 50 points Saturday.
“Just in general, I’d give us an A-minus for execution,” Enfinger said. “Still, maybe losing a little bit with just sheer potential to run with the 11. But we kept them and both the Front Row (Motorsports) trucks in our grasp the whole time. They were never light-years in front of us. Feel like guys were excellent on pit road and not crazy happy with my restarts, but just given we were restarting on the inside most of those times, I don’t know how much I’d have done different.”
Majeski ultimately was the biggest benefactor of the day as he gained nine points on the Round of 8 cutline after recovering from the flat tire. It will be a shot in the arm for a team that’s yet to reach Victory Lane in 2025 and has won at the next track on the docket — Bristol Motor Speedway (Sept. 11, 8 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Radio Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“It could have been a lot worse for sure,” Majeski said. “I think we’re (16) above going into Bristol, which is a good track for us. New Hampshire should be good as well. So, like where we’re at. Good recovery today. Nobody panicked and we’ll move on.”
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Although the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series changed the clock from the regular season to the playoffs, it was still “Heim Time” on Saturday at Darlington Raceway.
Pulling away after a restart on Lap 134 of 147, Corey Heim won the playoff-opening Sober or Slammer 200 at the challenging 1.366-mile South Carolina track. The win was Heim’s eighth of the year, one short of Greg Biffle’s record nine-victory season in 1999.
Heim crossed the finish line 0.766 seconds ahead of fellow playoff driver Daniel Hemric to collect his first victory at the “Lady in Black” and the 19th of his career. With the win, Heim earned automatic advancement to the Round of 8.
The break at the end of Stage 2 proved fortunate for the race winner. Heim felt a tire losing air shortly before the end of the stage, but he survived the stage in second place and brought the No. 11 Tricon Garage Toyota to pit road before the tire went flat.
“Lucky it wasn’t a complete blowout — otherwise we would have been in trouble,” Heim said. “I could make a little bit of speed on the wall, but it was such a high-risk play if you scrubbed it. You saw so many people have those right-front issues.”
One of those was Stage 2 winner Layne Riggs, Heim’s primary competition for the win. Moments before a collision between the trucks of playoff driver Kaden Honeycutt and Andrés Pérez de Lara brought out the third and final caution of the race on Lap 128, Riggs slammed the outside wall with a right-front tire down.
Riggs, who finished 17th, led 71 laps to Heim’s 65.
“I put a little pressure on the 34 (Riggs), and he got into it, and we were able to take advantage of it,” said Heim. “… It feels like I’m in a dream. Eight wins this year is phenomenal, man. It’s great to look back on, but we’ve also got so much to look forward to.”
Playoff drivers Grant Enfinger and Ty Majeski, the defending series champion, finished third and fourth, respectively — Enfinger with a consistent problem-free performance, Majeski after overcoming a flat right-front tire with a wave-around.
Trevor Bayne, running his first NASCAR race since 2023, came home fifth, followed by rookie Tanner Gray, playoff driver Tyler Ankrum, Timmy Hill, Corey Day and playoff driver Jake Garcia.
The complexion of the Truck Series Playoffs took a dramatic turn early in the race. Starting next to pole-winning Front Row Motorsports teammate Riggs, Chandler Smith led the first 10 laps, but on the 11th circuit, he slapped the outside wall and cut his right-front tire.
Attempts to repair serious damage to the No. 38 Ford proved futile, and Smith retired from the race in 30th place after completing 14 laps.
“Made a mistake on my end today,” Smith acknowledged. “Just got a little too greedy trying to run the fence a little too hard… When you get into that hard, it suckers you in, you cut a tire, and you’re done for the day.”
The early exit left Smith two points behind Garcia for the last spot in the Round of 8.
“We’ve got two races left,” Smith said. “(We’re) going back to Bristol, where we won earlier in the year. Then we’re going to New Hampshire for the last race in this round, where I’ve been really strong in the past as well.”
Honeycutt fell to 10th in the standings, seven points below the current cutline.
Hemric, on the other hand, leaves Darlington 33 points to the good.
“We’ve been wanting so badly to have execution like that,” Hemric said. “That was our cleanest race of the season.”
The Truck Series returns to action on Thursday, Sept. 11, at Bristol Motor Speedway (8 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
NOTE: Post-race inspection in the Craftsman Truck Series garage concluded without issue, confirming Heim as the Darlington winner.
DARLINGTON, S.C. — One week ago, when the NASCAR Cup Series’ regular season came to an end at Daytona International Speedway, the first two drivers on the wrong side of the playoff cutline were RFK Racing teammates Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece.
Team co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski found himself close to victory multiple times as well, with all three having legitimate paths to postseason competition in 2025. But ultimately, the teammate trio arrived at Darlington Raceway without the yellow trim on its windshield banners and spoilers that would otherwise indicate them as members of the 2025 championship hunt.
Buescher was the nearest of those three racers to getting into the postseason, one spot and 31 points short of being one of the 16 playoff drivers. His motivation is no different ahead of Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) than it has been all season: Go win races.
“That’s the only thing there is to do,” Buescher said Saturday morning. “And ultimately, I mean, it’s what you wish you could do every week anyway. Obviously, there’s always a bigger picture (that’s) more important at times. But for us, it’s just go to the race track with everything we got, take chances, be aggressive on them and see if we can’t pull a few upsets through the next handful of races.”
To call Buescher’s season a disappointment would misrepresent the body of work he and the No. 17 team have put together. Buescher ended the regular season 10th in points with four top fives and 13 top 10s — a top-10 figure that ties him with four others for fifth-most all season. His average finish of 14.1 ranks seventh overall after 26 races. But the underlying goose egg lies in the wins column. In a season that featured 14 different race winners, that lone zero stood between Buescher and a playoff position.
“You take away the fact that we missed the playoffs, it’s been a solid year. We’ve been fast,” Buescher said. “We’ve had a few runner-ups and been in contention to win a handful, and overall, our average finish is well on up there. So I mean, it’s been a great year. We’ve had speed at a lot of different styles of race tracks. Obviously, everyone’s aware and we’re proud of that, but ultimately it’s that final metric that you’ve gotta win to make the playoffs and be fighting for a championship at the end. The old way just doesn’t work anymore. So with that, take that speed we’ve got and win this year, but also be ready to show up and win races early next year so that we get past all the talk that we’ve had to go through the last couple months.”
Preece is in the midst of his first season driving the No. 60 RFK Racing Ford. The results didn’t produce that critical first Cup win that would’ve propelled him into the postseason, but he and his team, led by crew chief Derrick Finley, surpassed the expectations of many as the expansion team at RFK, which grew from two teams to three for the 2025 campaign.
“I feel like for a first-year team, we executed really well,” Preece said. “So outside of winning right now, I feel like we’re hitting a lot of the things that we need to hit on. And I would say the last 10 races is all about continuing to build momentum for next year. I mean, we’ve put ourselves in position to capitalize. Just didn’t work out.”
Keselowski mounted a midseason charge to boast about. Through the first 17 races of the season, the 2012 Cup champ ranked 30th or worse in points after 15 of those events. The final nine weeks of the regular season, though, propelled Keselowski to 19th in the post-Daytona rundown, a testament to the strength in speed he and his No. 6 crew found with seven finishes of 11th or better in those last nine races of the regular season.
“We certainly started out this season in a really difficult place,” Keselowski said. “And over the last dozen races or so, I think we’re showing the potential that we have. And if we can keep that level of performance, we’re a lot better team than what our standings show.”
There remains an obvious level of fight throughout the trio of drivers, all cut from the same old-school racing cloth. The difference, of course, is finding a way to break into Victory Lane and spoil the playoff party.
“We just need to convert the opportunities we’ve had to win into wins, and we haven’t done that,” Keselowski said. “I don’t think there’s any big secret to that. I had a car good enough to win in Iowa. Circumstances didn’t play out in our favor, and we didn’t win with it. You could extend that to my teammates who’ve had similar situations where they’ve been close to winning and we weren’t able to convert. You have to convert.”
