The number one driver in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs starting off the postseason dead last? A non-playoff driver winning the Southern 500 with a car that hadn't reached victory lane in eight years?
Just another race in the chaos that is the 2022 Cup Series season.
Sunday's Southern 500 lived up to its reputation as one of the sport's crown jewel events. The Track Too Tough to Tame dealt adversity to the last three Cup champions, leaving Kyle Larson (2021), Chase Elliott (2020) and Kyle Busch (2019) laps down or ending their night inside the garage.
Elliott got the worst of it, a turn one spin damaging the right rear suspension on his Chevrolet. Unable to return to the race, a 36th-place finish wiped out the 15-point cushion he had on the playoff field. NASCAR's Most Popular Driver left Darlington visibly frustrated after living through what he said at Media Day earlier this week: "I don't think anybody [in this championship fight] is safe at any point in time."
That came some 35 laps after Larson's problem, an electrical gremlin where he lost power on the No. 5 Chevrolet. An unscheduled pit stop to fix left him three laps down and it took a Hail Mary-style strategy from crew chief Cliff Daniels to recover. Larson wound up 12th, on the lead lap, but armed with a car capable of far more.
It was Busch who wound up with the biggest gut punch. A race-high 155 laps led meant little when the No. 18 started blowing out puffs of smoke under caution. The race leader with 23 laps remaining found himself pulling inside the garage seconds later, now entering his third straight month without a top-5 finish.
"Had a great car and don't have anything to show for it," Busch said. "That's what I really, really hate about it."
That opened the door wide for Erik Jones, a former Southern 500 winner driving Richard Petty's legendary No. 43. NASCAR's King amassed a record 200 Cup victories as a driver but only one Southern 500 trophy, earned way back on Sept. 4, 1967.
Jones wheeled his car to victory lane exactly 55 years later, ending his own three-year drought to bring his Cup career full circle. Jones' last victory came in this 2019 Southern 500, driving for Joe Gibbs Racing who let him go after an underwhelming three-year stint.
Petty picked him up off the scrap heap and the rest is history.
"I knew I could still do it," Jones said of this two-year rebuilding project. "I just knew we needed to grow the program to do it, and we have."
One week earlier and Jones would be sitting pretty, both inside the playoffs and advancing automatically into the round of 12. But for him, a win is a win, especially when considering the rich history of this race.
"You can't dwell on what could be," Jones said. "I'm just proud we won this race at this point."
Traffic Report
Green: Denny Hamlin. Hamlin survived an awful night for Joe Gibbs Racing, where both Busch and Martin Truex Jr. suffered mechanical problems while leading. His runner-up finish left him third in points with a comfortable 30-point cushion on the cut line.
Yellow: Martin Truex Jr. It looked like Truex, not Jones, would pull the upset before his water pump seized up while leading the race. After missing the playoffs a week earlier, 48 laps led showed the 2017 Cup champion won't take his defeat lying down. But another missed Southern 500 trophy? As he said himself: "It's about the fifth time I should have won this race, and I've only done it once."
Red: Chase Briscoe. Briscoe was an innocent victim in Elliott's wreck, limping home four laps down in 27th. That leaves him 10 points below the cut line and in a tough position to advance. He's now gone 13 races (since Memorial Day Weekend!) without a top-10 finish.
Speeding Ticket: Trackhouse Racing Team. The sport's trendy new contender this year fell flat during a playoff debut to forget. Daniel Suarez started the race a lap down after a pass through penalty for failing pre-race inspection three times. He fought all the way back only to speed on pit road, claw back from a lap down again and wind up 18th.
Teammate Chastain ran into some strange issues of his own after running inside the top 5. A bizarre drive pin issue left him four laps down, a problem the driver described felt like "the left rear was just low on air." Turns out there was debris in the hole that surrounds the single lug nut on that wheel and leaves it tight.
Chastain ran 20th, leaving both drivers vulnerable to potential first round elimination.
Oops!
Kevin Harvick was in position for a solid top-10 effort before it all fell apart underneath his No. 4. A buildup of rubber caught the rocker panel on fire, forcing Harvick to bail out of his car in an incident that left the 2014 Cup champ going off about the safety of NASCAR's Next Gen chassis.
Kevin Harvick's car bursts into flames! #NASCARPlayoffs
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) September 5, 2022
📺 : @USA_Network pic.twitter.com/WWW53y2y3d
"The car started burning," Harvick explained. "And as it burned, the flames started coming through the dash…. What a disaster, man. For no reason. We didn't touch the wall, we didn't touch a car and here we are, in the pits with a burned-up car and can't finish the race during the playoffs due to crappy-ass parts."
The problem left Harvick dead last in the playoffs, some 13 points below the cut line after becoming a trendy Championship 4 pick with back-to-back wins last month. But his issues with the NASCAR brass run deeper than just one bad race.
"We just keep letting cars burn up, letting people crash into stuff, get hurt, we don't fix anything," he railed in frustration before pointing his criticism toward NASCAR president Steve Phelps. "It's cheaper to not fix it … find somebody who can run [NASCAR] who can run it."
