HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (Sept. 4, 2024) — Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) announced Wednesday that incoming broadcast partner of the NASCAR Xfinity Series, The CW, will partner with drivers Sheldon Creed and Ty Gibbs to promote their upcoming slate of NASCAR Xfinity Series races in 2024.
The deal will kick off with a primary scheme on Sheldon Creed’s No. 18 Toyota GR Supra in the Focused Health 250 at 3 p.m. ET on Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway (USA, NBC Sports App, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Rasio). Ty Gibbs will represent The CW on his No. 54 Toyota Camry XSE the following weekend on Sunday, Sept. 15th at 3 p.m. ET in the Go Bowling at the Glen at Watkins Glen International (USA, NBC Sports App, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“We’re honored to help usher in a new era of the Xfinity Series with The CW,” said Steve de Souza, executive vice president of Xfinity Series and development for JGR. “We’re looking forward to assisting our great fanbase in making the transition to our new partners at The CW. There’s no shortage of compelling story lines and great racing in our series, and we’re all looking forward to the enthusiastic and dedicated coverage that our new partners will bring to every race.”
It was announced earlier this year that The CW has secured the exclusive broadcasting rights of all NASCAR Xfinity Series races, practices, and qualifying sessions beginning in 2025 and extending through the 2031 season. The deal marks the first time in Xfinity Series history that every race will be available on free, over-the-air broadcast television with additional content available through The CW’s digital platforms.
In addition to the seven-year deal, The CW has also secured the rights to the final eight races of the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series season. Beginning with the Food City 300 at 7:30 p.m. ET on Sept. 20 at Bristol Motor Speedway, race fans can tune in to The CW to follow the road to the Xfinity Series Playoffs. From there, The CW will be the home of Xfinity Series racing all the way through the crowning of the 2024 champion on Nov. 9 at Phoenix Raceway.
Joe Dilly’s summer vacation in 2016 was barely halfway through its first day when he’d already reached the ocean. The 14-year-old youngster had gone swimming in the saltwater at Ocean Isle Beach on the North Carolina coast, and when his family broke out a football, he was among those throwing spirals from the shallows.
Mischief, maybe a prank was Dilly’s first thought when he felt a sharp tug below the surface.
“I feel like a really hard pull under the water, kind of like someone grabs your foot to scare you,” Dilly recalls. “That’s exactly it, like it didn’t hurt — just a really strong pull. I’m looking around, and I don’t see anything.”
Dilly knew soon enough, though, that something was wrong, and a cousin saw a tall fin cresting the top of the water. Dilly quickly hobbled to the shore, admittedly “a little freaked out,” and saw blood everywhere as he reached the sand. A numbing feeling began to set in.
“I kind of knew it was a shark,” Dilly says.
So was born the mother of all conversation starters for the front-tire changer on Team Penske’s No. 22 Ford for driver Joey Logano. When FOX Sports introduced the No. 22 team’s over-the-wall crew to a TV audience during the April 21 broadcast of the Cup Series’ most recent race at Talladega Superspeedway, Dilly noted his rookie status in his five-second bio but threw in almost casually: “Also, shark attack survivor.”
The only thing missing was a record-scratch sound effect. “You know you’re a bad man when a shark bites into you and spits you out,” cracked FOX analyst Clint Bowyer. “Did you hear that guy?!”
Now 21 and in his first full season of Cup Series competition, Dilly and a veteran group of crew members are bracing for the playoffs that start with Sunday’s Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart (3 p.m. ET, USA, NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM) at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Team Penske has won the last two championships, with Logano’s second title in 2022 preceding Ryan Blaney’s first in last season’s campaign.
Dilly counts himself fortunate to have no long-term effects from his aquatic encounter eight summers ago, just the scars from near his toes to around his ankle. The wound, requiring more than 100 stitches to close, nicked one tendon but left others unblemished. Shark experts examined photos taken from the hospital, saying later that the bite marks were consistent with those made by a blacktip shark, which average nearly five feet in length. As pit-stop practice wound down last week at Team Penske’s campus, Dilly joked with his teammates that it must have been a great white.
Jake Seminara, Dilly’s opposite number on the rear-tire changes for the No. 22 team, was among those not buying it. The 38-year-old native of Steubenville, Ohio, has nearly two decades in the sport and two Cup Series championships to show for it, and he’s provided a valuable influence for Dilly and the rest of the crew. There’s a gap in age and experience between the two tire changers, but crew chief Paul Wolfe has enjoyed watching how they’ve blended into a cohesive group.
“He was a rookie coming in, and typically you wouldn’t see a guy with his experience level move up to a Cup car as quickly as he did,” Wolfe says of Dilly. “But he came in and we kind of put him through our training process and he got up to speed really fast. It’s really amazing. I think just the athletic side of it, he was able to adapt, and now you have a guy like Jake who’s been in the Cup garage for, I don’t know, 20 years or however long he’s been here, and you put some fresh guys like that with him, they’re able to balance each other out and help him progress a lot quicker.”
Both Dilly and Seminara were introduced to the sport by their fathers. Dilly’s father, Bryan, has worked at Penske for 25 years and was a car chief when Ryan Newman and Brad Keselowski drove for the organization. The younger Dilly would accompany his dad to races close to their home in Mooresville, North Carolina, growing up. He played one year of college football as a linebacker at North Greenville (S.C.) University, but spent his breaks training at Penske. When the opportunity arose on the racing side, he jumped.
Seminara, like Dilly, had also been immersed in stick-and-ball sports, but his welcome-to-NASCAR moment came in 1999 when his father took him to Pocono Raceway for his first race. He saw live pit stops, thought “I can do that,” and made it his mission as he finished high school to reach that goal. Seminara moved to North Carolina in 2004 — “people called me crazy,” he says – and split his time learning fabrication and mechanic duties, attending pit-crew school and working as a barback while fostering the right connections to make it all happen.
Jake Seminara, rear tire-changer for the No. 22 team, readies for a pit stop at Richmond Raceway (Alex Daus | NASCAR.com)
A year and a half later, Seminara reached the Cup Series on Mark Martin’s team for car owner Jack Roush, then pitted Kyle Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing entries for 10 years before joining Team Penske in 2018. The full-circle twist: Less than a decade after he watched Bobby Labonte win the first race he attended, Seminara was executing pit stops for the same No. 18 JGR team. “I found that kind of ironic,” he says now.
Seminara has seen pit-stop techniques and equipment evolve, and has been a part of seven-person, six-person and five-person crews as the rules have changed throughout his career. He says the crew members with longer tenures who have adapted quickest still make up the best teams on pit road, but he’s also taken time to mentor Dilly and the newer guard, shaping the next generation.
“I think everyone else on the team has won two championships, and he’s won one race, so he’s very fortunate, I think, to follow and learn,” Seminara says. “I feel like we can kind of steer him and teach him the way we think things should be done, but it’s up to him if he wants to do that. But we told him, eventually, one day, five, six, seven years down the road, you’re going to be the older guy, so you’re going to be teaching these younger guys.”
One of the most consequential pit-road changes came when NASCAR’s Next Gen car was introduced in 2022, with a single, center-mounted wheel fastener replacing the five-lug system. While many veterans were forced to adapt to a new method for tire changes, Dilly was the first Team Penske crew member to train solely on the single-lug technique. “They never let me even touch a five-lug gun,” Dilly says.
“He didn’t have to unlearn anything, right?” Wolfe said. “I think that was somewhat of an advantage for him. You’ve got these guys like Jake that have been changing five lugs for how many years and get that muscle memory, and a new guy coming in doesn’t have to forget what he did for 15 years and can start fresh. He’s obviously a very talented guy, and he’s done a nice job. It’s one thing to be able to do it in pit practice and have the speed that we look for, but then when you bring him to the big time, bring him to the race track and he’s still able to perform under the pressure was exciting to see and obviously the reason why he’s still on our car.”
The “big time” that Wolfe references is about to shift to its prime time in the 10 playoff races that lay ahead. Logano reached the Cup Series’ biggest prize just two seasons ago, but was eliminated after a rocky first round last year. This season, he slots in as the ninth seed in the 16-driver field, having clinched title eligibility with a late June win at Nashville Superspeedway.
For the No. 22 crew, the mechanics and general approach to pit service in the postseason may be unchanged, but the stakes are higher and margin for error even slimmer. Seminara has been through the playoff rigors before, but the hunger for his third championship burns inside.
“For me, it’s totally ramped up, but the butterflies will definitely get more intense,” Seminara says. “I think if you’re not getting nervous at this point, I don’t feel like you’re being competitive. For me, just this part of the year, you have to be flawless. You can make a mistake and you’re out of the playoffs, and then your season’s done and you just ride around for the next four, five, six, seven weeks. We got eliminated in the first round last year. It was terrible, and then you literally think, ‘Man, I’ve got seven more weeks of this. We’re irrelevant, basically.”
Seems there’s a high bar for stress already established for the tire changer who has survived a brush with a predator from the deep blue sea. Dilly says there’s no true comparison between the relative dangers of the ocean and the perils of popping over the wall into onrushing traffic, but the handful of close calls early in his young career haven’t slowed him.
“We kind of make fun of him, but I couldn’t imagine being bit by a shark,” Seminara says. “We always joke with him about it, right? No, I’ve never had anything traumatic to me happen like that, so I can’t put myself in those shoes.”
The bigger question is whether he’s been back in the water since. Dilly smiles and says his trips to the beach now come with an abundance of caution.
“I go to the ocean, but I go fishing now. I’ll go to my knee to cast, and I kind of walk out real quick,” he says. “Not the biggest fan of swimming anymore. If I can’t see my feet, I’m not a fan.”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Sept. 4, 2024) — Between the action-packed racing of America’s No. 1 motorsport each weekend, NASCAR Studios will provide fans additional entertainment and insights throughout the 2024 NASCAR Playoffs with the launch of three new shows: NASCAR Inside the Playoffs (truTV and Max), NASCAR Daily (YouTube) and Drop the Jack (YouTube and podcast platforms).
“NASCAR fans are the most passionate in the world and we want to deliver them quality options for additional entertainment, insight and analysis,” said John Dahl, NASCAR senior VP of content. “These new shows are a great complement to our existing options for NASCAR fans today, with popular media talent, industry insiders and rising voices eager to entertain and educate race fans however they prefer to consume content.”
“This is going to be so much fun,” said Shannon Spake, who adds to a remarkable national broadcasting resume that spans more than two decades and multiple sports for networks including SPEED, ESPN and FOX Sports. “I get to talk about the sport I have been a part of for 20 years in two totally different settings, alongside some of my greatest friends and most respected peers in the industry. The fans have been so good to me over the years, and I’m excited to take them further inside the action of the postseason while staying up to speed on some of the fun and entertaining things unfolding away from the track.”
A rundown of the three new shows is below:
NASCAR Inside the Playoffs
Thursdays, 7-8 p.m. ET on truTV and streaming on Max — Debuts Thursday, Sept. 5
NASCAR’s partnership with TNT Sports gets a head start before 2025 broadcast rights begin with the new weekly studio show NASCAR Inside the Playoffs, which will dissect the evolving postseason action through an unfiltered lens. The show is hosted by beloved veteran broadcasters Shannon Spake and Steve Letarte, along with up-and-coming media talent Dylan “Mamba” Smith. A rotating fourth voice of current and former drivers will join each week, beginning with two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch in the first two episodes. Jordan Bianchi, NASCAR reporter for The Athletic, will join to cover breaking news.
NASCAR Daily
Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. ET on YouTube and podcast platforms — Debuts Monday, Sept. 9
Balancing breaking news with entertaining conversation, Spake will infuse her perspective while welcoming regular guest appearances from drivers, industry personalities and other contributors in episodes running approximately 10 minutes every weekday morning. The show will also introduce a rotation of recurring segments that put a spotlight on different aspects of NASCAR and the fan experience, including checking in on the latest social media chatter, and a weekly sports betting segment featuring analyst Erica Renee Davis.
Drop the Jack
Thursdays, 3 p.m. ET on YouTube and podcast platforms — Debuts Thursday, Sept. 5
A new addition to the NASCAR podcast universe, Drop the Jack provides some of the Cup Series’ best pit crew athletes and other industry veterans a platform to engage in compelling conversations about the full spectrum of life at and away from the race track. Mamba Smith — a former full-time aspiring NASCAR driver turned rising media personality — will help guide these entertaining and emotional discussions with pit crew athletes Derrell Edwards, Michael Hicks, Jorden Paige and Paul Swan along with special guests.
Execution of all three shows will run through the new NASCAR Productions home in Concord, North Carolina. NASCAR opened its new 58,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art production facility earlier this year as it continues to invest significantly in original content and live production capabilities for the league and its stakeholders.
The 10-race, 16-driver NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs begin Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET on USA, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
There never will be another championship run like the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
That definitively can be said even with the likelihood the final 10 races of the season will produce the typically indelible moments that have come to define the crowning of a champion in NASCAR’s premier series. Controversy, drama and pressure have been hallmarks of the Cup playoffs for 20 years, and this year probably will be remembered for the same.
But before the green flag falls at Atlanta Motor Speedway, these playoffs already are one of a kind.
They will feature a unique mix of drivers, races and tracks that are highly unlikely ever to be assembled in this manner and order again. A curious blend of impending departures (Martin Truex Jr., Stewart-Haas Racing), intriguing debuts (Harrison Burton, Ty Gibbs) and riveting one-offs (Atlanta Motor Speedway, Watkins Glen International) that will add an unpredictable sheen to the championship fight.
Here’s a look at some spicy ingredients that set the table for the 2024 playoffs being such a rare breed:
First-round mayhem
For 10 years, the opening three races of the playoffs mostly have been a straightforward affair of intermediate tracks that seem built for weeding out lesser teams. Darlington Raceway and Kansas Speedway are known for rewarding drivers and teams with few weaknesses.
But Darlington and Kansas are absent in 2024, as the first round is transformed into an underdog’s paradise with a drafting track and road course for the first time.
Start with the Sept. 8 opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway, whose 2022 reconfiguration into a miniaturized version of Daytona or Talladega has produced razor-thin margins (the Feb. 25 race was the closest three-way finish in NASCAR history) and upset bids.
Then it’s the first playoff race ever at Watkins Glen, another haven of surprising outcomes that also has featured its share of first-time winners (Steve Park, Marcos Ambrose, AJ Allmendinger, Chase Elliott). The Sept. 15 event also will mark the first time its race falls outside of its traditional early to mid-August weekend since 1986 (when the 2.45-mile road course returned to the Cup schedule after a long layoff).
And of course the Sept. 21 elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway is a high-banked short track always capable of delivering fireworks.
This year’s first round is an X-factor delight but with a quick expiration date.
Atlanta and Watkins Glen are in the playoffs together this year, but both already have been returned to the regular season next year in the recently announced 2025 schedule.
Goodbye to all that
Chase Briscoe’s stirring win in the Southern 500 ensured that Stewart-Haas Racing will get at least one more shot at a title in its final season before shutting its doors. It’s the last playoff ride for a team that once was a perennial contender: two championships in the past 15 years and five Championship 4 appearances with Kevin Harvick.
Also a championship-race stalwart (five appearances between 2015-21), Martin Truex Jr. will cap his Hall of Fame-worthy career with a final run at a second Cup title that has been elusive (with three-runner-up finishes since the 2017 championship).
Upset upstarts
It would be hard to find a more inconceivable playoff debut than for Harrison Burton, who went from outside the top 30 in points to championship contender in the course of two magical laps at Daytona International Speedway. But what makes it even more astounding is that the first playoff appearance for Burton comes with little assurance he will have a chance to repeat. Wood Brothers Racing has already moved on with its No. 21 ride next season, and Burton has no confirmed 2025 plans, which will make the 2024 playoffs a major audition for the next ride.
The 2024 playoffs also will be the first for Ty Gibbs, and after a season that was an improvement in virtually every category over his 2023 rookie year, the first career Cup win for the 21-year-old could happen over the final 10 races.
Perfect attendance
They are the best teams in the Cup Series, but it still means something when Team Penske, Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports can qualify for the playoffs at a 100 percent rate. Since Penske’s expansion to a third car in 2018, this will mark only the second time that the 11 cars from those three powerhouse organizations all have made the championship field.
Missing but still present
It seems safe to say that these will be the last playoffs in a long while (let’s say at least the next decade) that won’t include at least one of these names: Kyle Busch, Ross Chastain, Chris Buescher and Bubba Wallace.
But in the uniquely inclusive manner of the NASCAR postseason, there’s a solid chance at least one will leave their mark in Victory Lane this year. The last three Cup seasons each have featured at least one non-playoff driver winning during the final 10 races. With Busch on a recent surge, and Buescher and Wallace achingly close to wins and devastated at missing the playoffs while their teammates qualified, expect one of the final 10 checkered flags to fall their way.
Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is the host of the NASCAR on NBC Podcast and has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.
And so it ends. The 2024 regular-season finale in the NASCAR Cup Series is in the books, and the 16-driver postseason grid has been cemented following Chase Briscoe’s thrilling victory at Darlington Raceway.
With the 16-driver postseason field now established, Atlanta Motor Speedway will act as the Round of 16 opener next Sunday (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App). See who’s trending upward and who is going the wrong way after Darlington.
THREE UP ⬆️
1. Chase Briscoe, No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford
Started: 3rd
Finished: 1st
What happened: A strong starting position translated to an even stronger finish for Briscoe and the No. 14 camp Sunday, and the Stewart-Haas Racing team pulled out all of the stops to make it come to fruition. From an electric slingshot maneuver to holding off a two-time Cup Series champion in Kyle Busch (more on him in a second), Briscoe did everything that was needed to prevail. And his reward? A postseason berth. What else can you say?
What’s next: It’s playoff time for Briscoe, and Atlanta will be where the No. 14 starts its title hunt. The Georgia venue will be a tricky one for Briscoe, though, as the 29-year-old has not tallied a top-10 finish in seven career Cup Series races there.
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
2. Kyle Busch, No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet
Started: 17th
Finished: 2nd
What happened: Middle-of-the-pack marks in practice and qualifying translated through Stages 1 and 2 of Sunday’s contest, but the No. 8 cranked it into gear during the race’s waning laps. After a handful of cautions, Busch found himself on the front row with Briscoe with a chance to clinch a win and a playoff berth. Briscoe and his late-race speed, meanwhile, had other plans, and in the end, Busch was unable to achieve either.
What’s next: Moral victories can still translate to race victories, and while Busch won’t have the opportunity to battle for the coveted Bill France Cup, Atlanta has been kind to the Las Vegas, Nevada, native. With two career Cup wins and 586 laps led in 29 Cup starts, there is another golden opportunity for Busch to find Victory Lane for a 20th consecutive year.
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
3. Corey LaJoie, No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet
Started: 19th
Finished: 9th
What happened: Being in the right place at the right time can pay dividends. Such was the case for LaJoie and the No. 7 Sunday evening during the race’s waning portions. Late-race cautions — including a multicar incident that collected Josh Berry and Ty Gibbs — were just what LaJoie needed to be in a position to claim his first top 10 since the season-opening Daytona 500 in February.
What’s next: Atlanta marks a chance for LaJoie to capitalize on Darlington’s exciting finish, and there is potential for the possibility to become a reality. LaJoie holds two prior top fives at the track (spring 2022, spring 2023), accounting for half of his career top-five finishes in the Cup Series.
Meg Oliphant | Getty Images
THREE DOWN ⬇️
1. Martin Truex Jr., No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Started: 5th
Finished: 36th
What happened: Truex was in a good position to clinch a playoff berth with ease. However, a Lap 3 wreck saw the 2017 Cup Series champion head to the garage early and hope his plus-58 points above the elimination line held. Fortunately for the No. 19 camp, the cushion was enough, and despite the finish, the team clinched a playoff berth at the conclusion of Stage 2.
What’s next: Truex has never won at Atlanta in 29 career Cup Series starts at the facility, but his six top fives and 397 laps led suggest there is potential to make a little noise. It’s a clean slate for the No. 19, and while Darlington wasn’t pretty, Atlanta acts as a pristine opportunity to correct wrongs and perhaps give Truex a chance to begin the playoffs with a bang.
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
2. Carson Hocevar, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet
Started: 2nd
Finished: 33rd
What happened: A crisp qualifying session netted the 21-year-old rookie a start on the front row Sunday, his best start in 35 career Cup races to date. A spin coming out of Turn 4 on Lap 314, however, prevented the No. 77 pilot from building on the scorching start to the weekend, with later wall contact ending his day at Lap 334.
What’s next: It’s back to the drawing board for Hocevar and Co., and Atlanta will act as relatively new territory for the young driver. In only one career Cup start at the track there earlier this year, Hocevar finished 19th. He did start the race P35, though, so there is a track record (albeit a small one) of finishing better than the starting peripherals suggest.
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
3. William Byron, No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
Started: 8th
Finished: 30th
What happened: A steady start to the race continued for Byron through Stages 1 and 2 after he finished eighth and fourth in each, respectively. Trouble brewed late for the No. 24 camp as the Chevrolet was one of seven cars involved in a late-race wreck that collected other high-profile contenders, including Bubba Wallace and Ty Gibbs. The end result was his second consecutive race with a finish outside the top 25.
What’s next: Good news, William Byron fans. Darlington might’ve left a sour taste, but Atlanta could prove to be sweeter as Byron possesses two career Cup wins at the track, with the most recent coming in July of 2023.
Chase Briscoe has battled Kyle Busch for a Darlington win before. But for a Southern 500 trophy — in the regular-season finale?
Turns out that wasn’t a problem for Briscoe either, who muscled up to put his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford into the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs in a walk-off win at Darlington Raceway, the track known for being “Too Tough to Tame.”
A daring performance by the 29-year-old surges the outgoing team into postseason glory, along with it a crown-jewel victory to boot.
Four years ago, Briscoe battled tooth-and-nail with Busch in an emotional NASCAR Xfinity Series win as the sport returned from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Days prior, Briscoe’s wife Marissa suffered a miscarriage, adding immense emotion to Briscoe’s triumph that shined in his post-race celebration — a kneel in prayer next to his race car, sponsored by High Point.
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images
In the present day, his family is blooming, with 2-year-old son Brooks on-site for Briscoe’s win along with Marissa, who is currently pregnant with twins. Briscoe was able to celebrate with them all, all after kneeling next to another High Point car for Stewart-Haas Racing.
The coincidences weren’t lost on Briscoe.
“Funny how it all works out, right?” Briscoe said. “Just to have them here. Brooks has never seen me win. Obviously watched (Briscoe’s first win) at Phoenix on TV. For him to get to experience this, for Marissa to be here. When I won all those races during COVID, she was never there. Obviously when I won at Phoenix, she wasn’t there. The last race she’s coming to. Yeah, she’s been telling me all weekend, You got to get it done. Think of that as motivation.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool to win with them here. Brooks has actually been telling me the last three days I’ve got to beat Kyle Larson and Kyle Busch. That’s all he told me. To come out where I have to beat Kyle Larson and Kyle Busch, it’s pretty ironic.”
Ethan Smith | For NASCAR Digital
Adding significance to Sunday’s win is that Stewart-Haas Racing is shuttering operations at the end of 2024. Crew chief Richard Boswell made sure his driver was conscious of everything on the line before one of the final restarts.
“As a group at SHR, one last time — 323 employees,” Boswell said on the team radio. “Three-hundred-twenty-three employees counting on us. We can do this. (Be) thinking about what you need on that restart here.”
Briscoe, who grew up idolizing his current team co-owner Tony Stewart, put it on his shoulders.
“I think I definitely run better under heavy pressure. For whatever reason, I’ve always been like that,” Briscoe said. “When Richard told me that, I’m like emotional. Everybody knows that. I started tearing up in the car thinking about how much was riding on my shoulders at that point. But yeah, I love that stuff. Like, I love the Game 7, heavy-pressure moment. For whatever reason, I feel like I do a lot better under those situations than not having a lot of pressure.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself just going into this week. Last week at Daytona was the worst race by, I mean, a mile I’ve ever raced in my entire career. I was embarrassed, so embarrassed. I texted Richard literally before we got on the plane. I said, ‘I don’t ever want to talk about this race again. We’re not going to talk about it this week. I promise you I’ll make it up to you next week.'”
Did he ever. The Indiana native rocketed from fourth to first in a three-wide move entering Turn 3 with 26 laps remaining, shooting past Ty Gibbs, Kyle Larson and Ross Chastain and into the lead. Another yellow flag flew shortly thereafter to set up one last restart with Busch chasing him down on fresher tires, but with team and playoffs in mind, Briscoe mustered enough machismo to defend the spot and claim the win.
“My car was the only one that could run the bottom in (Turns) 3 and 4.” Briscoe said. “I knew early in a run I had that kind of in the back of my mind. I had that big run, went to the inside. I felt like I was going to be OK even if I had to run the bottom. I was surprised Kyle didn’t cover and block me farther left. Yeah, I knew we were three-wide, but I knew Ross was leading. Stack that middle lane up. I went in there wide open. I knew I was going to literally clear Larson by like an inch.”
Any opportunity to clear Larson for a crown-jewel win, Briscoe said, is one he would take every time moving forward. A decision not to do so during the Coca-Cola 600 in 2022 cost him a shot at the victory that day at Charlotte and sent Briscoe spinning. Not Sunday in Darlington.
“I was just taking it all the way to the wall,” Briscoe said. “I knew that was my only shot to win the race. Like I said, I watched him lead (263) laps right behind him. I knew my car was just as good as his. It was a matter of who was going to get clean air, and that was the only opportunity I had.”
Now, Briscoe gets to lead the famed No. 14 into an improbable playoff run in his boyhood hero’s swan song as a NASCAR team owner.
“I’m a diehard Stewart-Haas fan, right? That’s the car I cheered for growing up,” Briscoe said. “I’ve seen that car win time and time and time again, win a championship. It’s been 90 something races since that car has been in Victory Lane. We had 11 chances left to do it. We’ve been decent this year. Been close a couple times. To be able to do it…
“It would have been awesome if we won next week, but it would have stunk (without being part of the postseason). At least now we have a chance to go win a championship. We don’t have any playoff points or anything like that. At the same time we were below the (elimination) line the whole time last time, we went to the Round of 8 (in 2022).
“We were talking earlier, I kind of love the back up against the wall thing. That’s certainly what we’re going to have now. We’ve just got to go. If we do what we did tonight, we can beat anybody. It’s just a matter of putting it all together.”
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Kyle Busch had two significant streaks at stake in Sunday’s regular-season finale at Darlington Raceway — an 11-year run of Cup Series Playoffs appearances and his remarkable stretch of 19 seasons with at least one Cup win. Busch can still keep the latter streak going in the final 10 races of the year, but the former ended in spite of his best attempts.
Busch’s late charge ended up just shy of Chase Briscoe’s stirring drive to victory in Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500. His Richard Childress Racing No. 8 Chevrolet was just 0.361 seconds behind Briscoe’s winning No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford at the checkered flag. It was another margin of defeat from 24 races ago, however, that came to mind when NBC Sports’ Dave Burns asked about his recent brushes with what would have been a playoff-clinching win.
“And Atlanta, yeah,” Busch said, recalling his third-place finish by a slim 0.007 seconds to winner Daniel Suárez back in February. “It’s short. Come up short. Maybe I am a washed-up old dog, but hopefully, I can find a few more trophies.”
Busch was mired in traffic for much of the evening, finishing out of the running for stage points at each break. But points would be of no measurable help in his playoff bid; Busch entered 106 below the provisional elimination line, and only a victory could vault him into the 16-driver field.
Busch made a legitimate run at it, with a late pit stop providing him with Goodyear tires that were nine laps fresher than Briscoe’s for the run to the finish. Busch said that he needed Briscoe’s tires to be roughly three laps older for his No. 8 Chevy to have a better chance to contend.
“We put ourselves in this position, and through much of that race, didn’t think we had a shot to get ourselves a win and punch our way through,” Busch said, “but tires there at the end, and having an opportunity also just put wind in our sails. But then once I got in the wind of the 14 car, I couldn’t do anything with it. You know, just lost too much grip and the wake on these things … he wasn’t blocking or anything, I just lost grip. That was all I had.”
Busch has been buoyed by his recent performance, which has helped soothe some of the doldrums from his summertime stretch of five DNFs in a seven-race span that created his must-win scenario. He finished the regular season with three consecutive top-five finishes, including his current two-race streak of runner-up days that have been laced with heartache.
The two-time champion and 63-time winner hasn’t experienced a winless skid this long in his Cup Series career, and the frustration level has risen.
“A lot of people are stat people. 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,” said Busch, who has finished second or third on seven occasions since his last win (June 4, 2023, Gateway), “and 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 and Team Chevy and all of our sponsors and everybody that supports us and gets us here and give Rowdy Nation something to really cheer about on Monday.”
Busch has missed the Cup Series Playoffs just three times — as a rookie in 2005, then again in 2009 and 2012 — but never before in the elimination-style format introduced in 2014. The goals the rest of the way, he says, are simple — win and potentially cause a playoff disruption in the process.
“I mean, that’s going to be our thing. If we can chase some checkered flags, we might piss some people off in the mayhem of getting those,” Busch said. “They don’t like it when you get guys on the outside winning races much, especially when you got to race them hard or door them a little bit, and it ruins their points day, so I’m sure we’ll hear some stories about that. Little foreshadowing for you.”
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Tyler Reddick was laid low, sick as could be. The Cup Series Regular Season Championship was at stake, and 500 grueling miles in surface-of-the-sun heat at one of NASCAR’s most punishing tracks stood between him and that goal.
Team co-owner Michael Jordan, on hand to watch 23XI Racing’s operations on a sultry day at Darlington Raceway, knew a little about that.
Reddick turned in his own version of “The Flu Game,” taking a page from Jordan’s historic Game 5 performance through a bout of food poisoning in the 1997 NBA Finals. Reddick — facing his own severe stomach ailment — rallied to 10th place in Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 to seal the regular-season crown by a scant single point over Kyle Larson, who swept the stages but slipped to fourth place at the checkered flag.
Reddick was taken to the infield care center for treatment immediately post-race but emerged at the team’s gathering spot near pit road’s exit. Among the first to congratulate the 28-year-old driver on his accomplishment was Jordan, who battled his own case of nerves throughout the nearly four-hour event.
“I mean, I know what it feels like to be sick and trying to perform, and just to do what he did, I mean, I wasn’t going around 200 miles an hour in a car, but I’m proud of his effort, and we needed it,” Jordan said. “We won by one point. I mean, he gutted it out. So hopefully he feels better tomorrow, and we feel better next week.”
Near the end of Stage 1, Reddick began telling his team that the stomach bug he’d fought since midday Friday was flaring up. He said his son, Beau, had been sick from the previous weekend and that the illness was apparently contagious. His team offered crackers, Tums and fluids for his next pit stop, when Reddick said he worried his ailment had taken a vomiting turn. Despite all this, he finished fourth at Stage 1 as the searing sun began to set.
Reddick spilled the first batch of pills that his No. 45 Toyota team had handed him, and his crew settled on offering a water bottle filled with a medical concoction that would help him through the race’s long stages. By Lap 128, the No. 45 radio signaled to its driver: “Just remind him of MJ.”
“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,” Reddick said. “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. We were able to avoid a lot of that, which was nice, but it was extremely uncomfortable in the car all night.”
Reddick faded to eighth by the end of Stage 2, telling his team, “I’m doing all I can, I promise.” He also asked for an update on the running Cup Series standings and was told he’d start the final stage one point behind but that he’d need to gain two spots since Larson held the tiebreaker with more regular-season wins. He slowed when a multicar crash erupted in front of him with 24 laps remaining and was 14th at the time of his final pit stop.
The service left him on Goodyear tires that were nine laps fresher than some of his competitors by the end, and he methodically clipped off the handful of spots he needed, with his crew giving him regular updates over the team communications. Larson’s slide after Chase Briscoe took control for the victory, combined with Reddick’s final pass of Chase Elliott for 10th on the 362nd of 367 laps, was part of what made the difference. The other part was Reddick pushing through his physical anguish in one of NASCAR’s longest events.
“To answer that, it’s what we have right in front of us,” explained Reddick, who said he never considered having a relief driver. “We’re trying to win this thing, win the regular season. I mean, that’s what we were mindful of the whole way. Just trying to think of what we could do to stay in the hunt of that. We got to Stage 3, we were just thinking, OK, how many points are we behind? Where do we need to be? We went to work on what we needed to do to try to put ourselves in position to get there. I mean, it took things out of our control to make it happen. Some cars got in front of the 5 (Larson). That’s ultimately what allowed us to get it from 10th.
“Yeah, just got to fight all night long. You never can count on that happening, right? The best car all night losing control of the race. But you have to be in position to take advantage of it in case it does.”
Blocking out the woozy feelings was no easy feat, especially with the team offering reminders — almost as a distraction.
“We were making jokes about it because Michael was giving him a hard time, asked if he was alive, and he said the flu game there was always a very notable win, back in the day on their run to the championship,” said No. 45 crew chief Billy Scott. “We were making jokes about we were going to compare how many points he got versus Michael got that day. So yeah, that’s amazing to gut that out, to run top 10 all day long, to finish top 10, to have to make the passes there at the end that he needed to put us in position to win. You’re right, I have not experienced that, not witnessed that, but I can’t imagine how tough it was.”
To answer Scott’s conjecture, a comparison of the points shows:
Michael Jordan, Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals: 38 points; Chicago Bulls win by two points
Tyler Reddick, 2024 Southern 500: 37 points; wins regular-season title by one point
Meg Oliphant | Getty Images
Jordan’s exuberance for Reddick’s accomplishment, however, was tempered by the end of Bubba Wallace’s postseason hopes. Wallace won the pole in 23XI’s No. 23 Toyota, but his involvement in the race’s biggest crash, plus Briscoe’s breakthrough, thwarted his hopes.
Jordan had said in a late-race interview with NBC Sports that he was “terrified” watching the team that he co-owns with driver Denny Hamlin fight for dueling regular-season goals. Post-race, he was smiling alongside the Regular Season Championship trophy, but his feelings were split.
“I’m still disappointed. Obviously, I’m disappointed we didn’t get both cars in,” Jordan said. “Like I said, Bubba did a great job of qualifying and trying to get himself in, but you know that disappointment makes me a little bit happy to see Reddick fighting himself to a championship. I mean, I’m kind of halfway feeling better and halfway feeling sad. But look, we are blessed as a team, and we’re going to keep getting better. I’m gonna stress that from my perspective, and I know Denny’s going to do the exact same thing.”
Reddick used up every bit of the 17-point cushion he had entering Sunday night’s 500-miler but escaped with a valued bonus of 15 playoff points for the 10-race postseason ahead. That windfall slots him as the third seed for the playoff opener next weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The trophy represented what’s been a journey for the 23XI Racing organization, still just in its fourth season of Cup Series competition.
“Yeah, it’s just a testament to all the hard work that everyone at 23XI, here at the race track, 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.”
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Basketball great Michael Jordan sat on the Darlington Raceway pit wall Sunday night watching his 23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace contend for a position in the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs in the late laps of the regular-season finale Cook Out Southern 500. Jordan had offered philosophical advice for the all-important evening and shown his support for the 30-year-old talent all year.
A little farther down pit road, Chris Buescher’s Roush Fenway Keselowski team was equally on edge having rallied and delivered all night for its driver — despite trying circumstances — needing to beat Wallace to earn that 16th and final playoff position to race for the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
In the end, it was a brand-new season winner, Chase Briscoe, who would instead take a playoff position, meaning that instead of three drivers, only two (Martin Truex Jr. and Ty Gibbs) advanced to playoff contention based on points earned. A first-time winner meant instead of claiming a points position, Buescher and Wallace were just below the elimination line despite eventful and emotional nights for both.
The first person to greet Buescher at his dinged-up No. 17 RFK Ford on pit lane post-race was team co-owner and fellow driver Brad Keselowski. The two shook hands and shared a short private exchange before Keselowski looked at the nearby scoring screen to see exactly how close his teammate had come to a title chance.
“It takes a whole season to put these things together and we came up a little short,” Keselowski said before stepping away.
Although Buescher finished fifth and had kept himself in that final transfer points position for most of the night, contact with Todd Gilliland’s Front Row Motorsports Ford slammed Buescher’s Mustang into the wall bringing out a caution with only 45 of the 367 laps remaining.
The RFK team made repairs but Buescher returned to the track in a much tighter points situation than he had been in all night. If there had not been a new winner – or a Wallace win — Buescher only needed to finish within 12 positions of Wallace to secure the final playoff position. And for most of the night, he was on track for that. Wallace finished 16th.
But Briscoe took the lead with 26 laps remaining — essentially negating both Buescher and Wallace efforts.
Alejandro Alvarez | NASCAR Digital Media
“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,” a disappointed Buescher explained, leaning on his car. “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.
“Can’t control everything, right,’’”he continued. “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.”
Wallace was similarly disheartened, standing by his car while race winner Briscoe celebrated by spinning donuts on the frontstretch, his team cheering nearby.
Late in the race with Wallace still contending for the playoff position, Jordan smiled and shared with a live USA Network race audience that he was “absolutely terrified” sitting and watching all the drama from the pits.
“But that’s what NASCAR’s all about, I enjoy it,” Jordan said. “I don’t have basketball anymore but this could replace it very easily. It’s exciting.
“Everybody wants something but something don’t come for free,” he said of the advice he gave Wallace before the race. “If you want more, it’s going to cost more that means you have to put the effort in there. He understands that.”
It certainly wasn’t for a lack of effort Sunday night. Wallace won the pole position for the race and led 37 laps — second only to Kyle Larson’s massive 263 laps-led total. More than race winner Briscoe’s 26.
But Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota suffered damage in a multi-car accident with only 22 laps remaining and he could not get back ahead of Buescher, where he had been for much of the night.
“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, noting Hamlin and Larson had already won races and would not have bumped that third points position as Briscoe’s win did.
“Who won? The goal post moved again. They were better and deserving so congrats to the 14. We come back tomorrow and gotta hit it harder than we did. That’s sports. You go up and down and round and round. Gotta put this weekend behind and put the disappointment behind of not making the playoffs and go give your all for the next 10 [races].”
Tyler Reddick clinched the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Regular Season Championship after Sunday’s 10th-place finish in the Southern 500 regular-season finale at Darlington Raceway.The No. 45 Toyota ended the night just one point ahead of rival Kyle Larson to score the triumph.
The title is Reddick’s first since NASCAR began recognizing the leading points scorer at regular season’s end in 2017, when Joe Gibbs Racing driver Martin Truex Jr. claimed the inaugural championship. That momentum carried Truex to his first NASCAR Cup Series Championship through a masterful postseason in which he won four of the final 10 races, including the title race.
“Yeah, it’s just a testament to all the hard work that everyone at 23XI, here at the race track, week in and week out, back at Airspeed, puts into this,” Reddick said. “We’re on Year 4 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.”
Reddick, driver of the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota, is a two-time winner in 2024, collecting checkered flags at Talladega Superspeedway and Michigan International Speedway. Reddick’s 11 top fives and 18 top-10 finishes are the most in the series after 26 races in 2024.
Larson, the 2021 Cup Series champion, led a dominant 263 of 367 laps on Sunday night, sweeping stage victories and finished fourth, but Reddick’s 17-point margin entering the day provided just enough cushion to allow Reddick to come out on top with a 10th-place run by the checkered flag. Chase Elliott, the 2020 series champion, finished 11th, one spot behind Reddick.
As the Regular Season Champion, Reddick receives a bonus of 15 playoff points that will carry through each round of the NASCAR Playoffs to which he advances.
