Following what Chase Briscoe deemed an embarrassing performance in the penultimate race of the regular season at Daytona International Speedway, he vowed that the No. 14 team would swing for the fences at Darlington Raceway. Boy, did they.
After qualifying a season-best third, Briscoe was in the mix for the duration of the Southern 500. He finished the opening stage in third, far-flung from a dominant Kyle Larson. But in Stage 2, his gap closed to the No. 5 car, now within striking distance for the final third of the race.
Larson powered on in the final stage, leading a total of 263 laps. But when the field pitted following a Lap 336 crash, it allowed Briscoe to get a slingshot run down the backstretch into Turn 3 on Lap 341. He passed Larson, Ty Gibbs and Chastain in one swoop. New leader, No. 14.
Only three green-flag laps of racing ensued before a multi-car wreck was triggered with contact between Gibbs and Josh Berry. Kyle Busch, who carried the No. 8 Chevrolet to third, elected to pit for fresh tires, as his crew chief Randall Burnett didn’t believe he had the sheer speed to race heads up with Briscoe and Larson for the win. The chase was on.
Restarting seventh, Busch made quick work to get to second position. But as he inched closer to Briscoe, the three-lap fresher tires began to equalize. The No. 8 car closed with a couple tenths of a second, but Briscoe, who was ripping the fence, never wavered. When the checkered flag flew, Briscoe won his way into the 2024 Playoffs, knocking out Chris Buescher. Other big-name drivers such as Busch, Chastain and Bubba Wallace missed the cut, too.
“I was sideways, counter steering,” Briscoe said of his late-race battle with Busch. “Like I was in a sprint car. Yeah, this night just literally went perfect. The pit crew did an incredible job. I was crying. After the checkered, I just won the Southern 500, this is a crown jewel.”
The Darlington victory is meaningful in more ways than one for Briscoe. Through the first four months of the 2024 season, speculation ran rampant regarding the future of Stewart-Haas Racing. On May 28, team owner Tony Stewart informed the organization, filled with more than 320 employees, that it would shutter at the conclusion of the season.
The employees refused to surrender.
“This group, the day that we found out that the team wasn’t going to exist any more, we went over to the shop floor, we all looked at each other and said, We’re in this till the end,'” Briscoe recalled. “We’re not going to give this up. We kept saying all week we got one bullet left in the chamber. That bullet hit.”
On the flip side, Busch finished runner-up in consecutive weeks, first losing out to Harrison Burton and now Briscoe. Dating back to Michigan, two-time Cup champion has three straight top-five finishes for the first time since midway through the 2022 — his final campaign with Joe Gibbs Racing — regular season.
“Something to build on and get better for,” Busch stated. “We just missed a lot in the early part of the year, through the middle part of the year, to put ourselves in this spot, to be on the outside looking in. To come in here for a last ditch effort and have a shot. Early in the race, I wouldn’t have thought we had a shot. So felt like we really overachieved towards the end and got a really good finish for what we had or what I thought we had. We’ll take that and keep building on it.”
Meanwhile, Buescher has to recollect on all the missed opportunities during the opening 26 races. Over a two-race stretch at Kansas and Darlington in early May, he encountered heartbreaking defeats, including losing out to Larson by .001 seconds, the closest finish in Cup history. The following week at Darlington, Tyler Reddick, who won the regular season championship by one point over Larson, attempted a slide job on Buescher and pinched the No. 17 car into the wall.
When Larson was cruising out front, it looked like it was going to be a heads up point race for the final playoff spot between Buescher and Wallace. Both teams encountered late-race mishaps, but the No. 17 car surged ahead of the No. 23 Toyota. It was all for not with Briscoe capturing the checkered flag, pushing Buescher below the elimination line, despite finishing 11th in the regular season standings. Buescher ended the regular season with an average finish of 13.7, best enough for fourth in the series among full time drivers.
“Didn’t quite get it done again and I’m on the outside looking in,” Buescher said. “Unfortunately, it’s the system we’re all playing in. We’ve had such a great year, worked so hard and been so fast and outrun so many of these cars that are going to get to run for the championships. That’s the system and we didn’t work it right.”
Wallace applied the pressure to Buescher early in the race, leading 37 laps after winning the pole and erasing 10 of the 21 points that he was behind entering Darlington. The No. 23 car lost track position amid the rash of late cautions and was part of the multi-car incident on Lap 343.
In the end, Wallace missed the playoffs for the third time in four seasons with 23XI Racing. He finished 12th in the regular season standings and is on pace to have the best average finishing position of his Cup career.
“Hats off to [Briscoe], I though I did something yesterday and they one upped us and showed up when it was game time,” Wallace told NBC Sports. “We weren’t good enough for 16th this year. Hate saying that, but it wasn’t from a lack of effort from all of us on this 23 car. Best of luck to the 45 and hopefully a Toyota wins.”
With the points resetting, Briscoe has catapulted to 13th on the playoff grid, tied with Alex Bowman and Burton for the transfer spot.