DARLINGTON, S.C. – One race into the 10-race NASCAR playoffs and several of NASCAR’s big stars are in danger of not advancing to the next round.
Most notably of those is two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch of Joe Gibbs Racing. The 2015 and ’19 Cup Series champion was involved in a crash on lap 125 during Sunday’s Southern 500 that ended his day. It appeared Austin Dillon got into the rear quarterpanel of Busch’s Toyota, sending Busch into the wall.
Many of the fans in the near-capacity crowd wildly cheered Busch’s exit. The driver hastily pulled into the garage area, sending some onlookers and other crew members in his path scattering to get out of the way.
Busch went into the No. 18 team transporter for a few minutes before describing the incident that has created a major obstacle to moving onto the next round.
“It wasn’t the 3’s (Austin Dillon) fault,” Busch said. “We’ll Just take our lumps. We were running like shit, and that’s what you get when you run like shit.
“We shouldn’t be there. I don’t know what our problem is. Every time we go to sim and use sim and think we have a good sim session we go to the race track, and we suck. I’m done with that. We’ll have to use some other tools on figuring out how to be good. The M&M’s Camry was not very good, and we were running terrible, and we got wrecked. It wasn’t the 3’s fault.”
Busch finished 35th in the 37-car field. He now sits two points below the cutoff to advance to the next round int he playoffs.
Daytona 500 winner Michael McDowell was also among the playoff drivers to experience misfortune when he crashed into the inside retaining wall on the backstretch on lap 31.
“I’m not really sure what happened,” McDowell explained. “The 43 (Erik Jones) kind of got everybody jammed up. I think he started on the front there without tires, which is a tough spot to be in and I just went three-wide underneath him and just got into the patch with my left sides just a little bit low. I got loose enough into the wall and that was about it. I’ll have to see the replay, but just heartbreaking for everybody on this Front Row team. We had high hopes coming into the playoffs and this is not how we wanted to start it.”
Of the 16 drivers in the Playoffs, McDowell is last, 20 points below the cutoff.
The first playoff driver to have an incident was Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman, who scraped the wall on lap 12 and had a tire rub. The tire blew three laps later when he hit the wall in turn three. Teammate William Byron ran into the side of Bowman’s Chevrolet.
Both drivers were able to continue in the race until Byron crashed in turn one on Lap 201. He finished 34th.
“That was a big hit,” Byron explained. “On that pit stop, it looked like we dropped the jack, and the left front was still finishing up. I took off and everything felt okay. I went to pass the No. 00 (Quin Houff) or somebody down the front stretch; and was just about to turn into (Turn) 1 and the left front went down. There was nothing we could do. The guys did an awesome job to fix it. We were running like Top-12, I think, even with all the (earlier) right rear damage and it’s just terrible. I don’t know, man.
“That sucks.”
Another playoff driver that had trouble but remains in contention to advance was one of the pre-race favorites, Ryan Blaney. The Team Penske driver led early in the race and was running 19th when he spun out in turn four with 47 laps left in the race.
The Ford driver was able to keep his car off the wall and stay on track. He sits fifth in the playoff standings, comfortably above the cutoff line.
During that caution Martin Truex Jr. had just taken the lead, but was nailed by NASCAR officials for speeding on pit road. That dropped him back to ninth when the green flag waved on lap 326.
Just one lap later, defending Cup champion Chase Elliott crashed in turn one after getting squeezed in a three-wide battle and making contact with Christopher Bell’s Toyota. The brake rotors were broken on the No. 9 Chevrolet and Elliott finished the race 31st. He left Darlington Raceway 10th in the Playoffs, four points above the cutoff.
That left Kyle Larson as the only Hendrick Motorsports driver that was not involved in a crash Sunday night at Darlington.
He finished second in a dramatic battle with race winner Denny Hamlin.
“It’s good to get a good start,” Larson said. “Everybody is nervous for the final 10 and the anticipation of how it will go and get some confidence in the team. I’m hoping we can go to Richmond and do even better there.”
Larson has more points than anyone, totaling 2,106, and should be in no danger of missing the second round of the playoffs.