Darlington Raceway

Basketball great Michael Jordan sat on the Darlington (S.C.) Raceway pit wall Sunday night watching his 23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace contend for a 2024 Playoff position 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 that will 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 green 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.

“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 front stretch, 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].

A combination of stubbornness and patience paid off handsomely for Brad Keselowski on Sunday at Darlington Raceway, where the driver of the No. 6 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford ended a 110-race winless streak with victory in the Goodyear 400.

Keselowski’s triumph, which came at the expense of hard-luck teammate Chris Buescher and pole winner Tyler Reddick, gave the Ford Dark Horse Mustang its first NASCAR Cup Series victory this season in 13 races and led to a heated exchange between Beuscher and Reddick on pit road after the fact.

It was also Keselowski’s first win as a principal in RFK Racing, his second at Darlington and the 36th of his career.

“What a heck of a day,” exulted Keselowski, who finished 1.214 seconds ahead of runner-up Ty Gibbs. “It’s Darlington, so whether it’s your first win, your last win, this is a really special track. The history of NASCAR, it’s as tough as it gets, and that battle at the end with my teammate and Tyler Reddick, we just laid it all out on the line, it was freaking awesome.

“I thought it couldn’t get much better than Kansas. It did today. That was awesome. I’m so glad you guys got to see that (addressed to the fans). That was incredible. Thanks for being here.”

Keselowski was stubborn in the way he raced Reddick after the final restart on Lap 261 of 293, aggressively staying beside the No. 45 Toyota and running him up the track in Turn 3.

For four straight laps, Keselowski and Reddick battled side-by-side, allowing Buescher to slip past into the lead at the start/finish line on Lap 264. Reddick cleared Keselowski shortly thereafter and took off in pursuit of Buescher.

That’s when Keselowski exercised patience as stayed within striking distance, waiting for the drama that unfolded ahead of him.

On Lap 284, Reddick’s ill-timed bid for the lead went awry, and his No. 45 Camry slid up the track into Buescher’s Ford, pinning it against the outside wall in Turn 4. Both cars were damaged and unable to maintain pace, and Keselowski charged into the lead on Lap 285.

Buescher, still smarting from last week’s loss to Kyle Larson at Kansas in the closest finish in Cup Series history (0.001 seconds), confronted Reddick on pit road after the drivers climbed from their cars.

“We got wrecked,” Buescher said later. “That one’s clear as day. Don’t need any cameras to tell us. I don’t know what to say. We’ve raced really clean through the years, tried to be really respectful about it, and we get used up.

“It (Reddick’s move) is just something that you know is not going to work. I’m just really pissed off about it right now. We certainly had a chance to win another one. I’m proud to have that speed. Just huge congratulations to Brad and the 6 bunch on their win. That’s awesome, but I wanted it for our group right here.”

Reddick took responsibility for the incident and punctuated his conversation with Buescher with the words “I know. I (screwed) up—I’m sorry.”

Reddick elaborated after he and Buescher separated.

“I completely understand where he is coming from,” Reddick said. “He was running the top, running his own race, running his own line to keep me at bay. I made a really aggressive move and was hoping I was going to clear him. When I realized I wasn’t going to, I tried to check up to not slide up into him, but, yeah, I wish I wouldn’t have done that.

“I completely understand why he is that mad. He did nothing wrong. Just trying to win the race, and to take myself out—that’s one thing—I can live with that, but just disappointed it played out the way that it did, and I took him out of the race as well.”

All but lost in the late-race drama was Gibbs’ career-best second-place finish. The driver of the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota also finished second in Stage 1 and third in Stage 2 behind respective stage winners Kyle Larson and Reddick.

Josh Berry finished third in his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford, followed by Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe. William Byron, Bubba Wallace, Alex Bowman, Justin Haley and Michael McDowell completed the top 10.

Hamlin led one lap during a cycle of green-flag pit stops in the final stage, extending his streak of consecutive races with at least one lap led to 17.

Larson (34th on Sunday after a late-race crash) leads the series standings by 30 points over Martin Truex Jr., who finished 25th after suffering alternator issues.

Welcome back, Kyle Larson.

The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion held off a desperate charge from fellow Playoff driver Tyler Reddick at sold-out Darlington Raceway to claim victory in Sunday night’s Cook Out Southern 500 and earn an automatic berth in the Round of 12.

Larson entered the Playoff opener with an undistinguished average finish of 17.5 in his previous six races, but he weathered a transmission momentary stuck in neutral and a disconcerting brush with the wall to register his third victory of the season, the 22^nd of his career and his first at the famed Lady in Black.

"Yeah, finally from start to finish," Larson said of his ability to put together a complete race. "Eighteenth to third in the first stage, I didn’t think that was possible. Our race car was really good when the sun was out. Just had to work on it.

"I messed up once and it got hung in neutral, and I slid and hit the wall, and I think bent the toe link a little bit, so it was kind of a struggle from there. Definitely had to fight it more than I was earlier, but we kept our heads in the game. That was really important. This race is all about keeping your head in it…

"What a great way to start the Playoffs, and hopefully we can keep it going."

Larson took the lead for the first time during a quick pit stop on Lap 313 and held it for the final 55 circuits. Reddick rolled off pit road second but couldn’t find a way past the race winner.

"Kyle and I were pretty close the majority of the day, honestly, and he just got ahead of us there on pit road, but all in all, this is the day that we needed to have," said Reddick, who led 90 laps and crossed the finish line .447 seconds behind Larson.

"Really just thankful for the hard work from my pit crew, from the team, everyone at the shop. Days like this, with a car like this, we haven’t been able to get a second-place finish out of it, so really glad we were able to do that, and it was a really good points day on top of that, as well."

Chris Buescher ran a mistake-free race and finished third, followed by William Byron, who charged forward from his 23^rd starting position. Ross Chastain ran fifth, with Brad Keselowski and Bubba Wallace behind him, as Playoff drivers claimed the top seven positions.

While Larson leaves Darlington with guaranteed admission to the Round of 12, Byron, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, leads the Playoff standings by one point—over Larson. Reddick is 15 points behind Byron, followed by Buescher and Denny Hamlin, who trail by 18 points.

Catastrophes proved the undoing of several Playoff drivers who showed excellent speed but succumbed to a variety of pit road mistakes and errors in judgment.

Hamlin led 177 laps, swept the first and second stages and dominated the race—until he made an extra green-flag pit stop on Lap 274, believing he had a loose wheel. Hamlin lost a lap and any chance he had of starting the Playoffs with a victory. Hamlin’s night got worse when he was collected in a five-car wreck on Lap 330. He finished 25^th.

After Hamlin’s demise, Kevin Harvick was chasing Reddick for the lead. Harvick steered his car toward pit road on Lap 309, causing Reddick to check up in front of Ryan Newman in an attempt to duplicate Harvick’s maneuver. Newman spun in Turn 4, causing the sixth caution, and the red light indicating a closed pit road caught Harvick just before he reached the entry line. The resulting penalty sent Harvick to the back of the field for a restart on Lap 317, with no time to recovered past 19^th.

A driver with no margin for error entering the Round of 16, Michael McDowell didn’t have the speed to stay on the lead lap, but his Waterloo came in the same Lap 330 wreck that involved Hamlin and fellow Playoff driver and pole winner Christopher Bell. McDowell’s No. 34 Ford was too badly hurt to continue, and he fell out of the race in 32^nd place.

McDowell heads to next Sunday’s Playoff race at Kansas Speedway in 16^th place, 19 points behind Bell in 12^th.

Late in the first stage, Bell slammed the outside wall and damaged the suspension on his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, ruining any chances of victory.

"I just got in the marbles and fenced it hard," Bell radioed to his team.

After the stage break, Bell dropped precipitously through the field and was soon lapped by leader Denny Hamlin.

"The toe is messed up—I’m having to turn the wheel a lot," Bell radioed to crew chief Adam Stevens.

Bell, who finished a lap down in 23^rd, wasn’t the only Playoff driver who fell victim to mistakes in the first stage, which ran under the green flag from start to finish. Joey Logano scraped the wall at the apex of Turns 3 and 4 on Lap 86.

His No. 22 Ford bit the wall again on Lap 115—the final circuit of Stage 1—when the No. 23 Toyota of Wallace spun underneath him in Turn 4 and knocked the right rear of Logano’s car into the fence, after Hamlin had taken the green/checkered flag to win the stage and the accompanying Playoff point.

Martin Truex Jr. (who finished 18^th) lost four spots after brushing the wall late in the stage and ran 17^th in the first segment. Truex’s problems multiplied in Stage 2 when he had to make an unscheduled pit stop because of a loose wheel and lost two laps.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (16^th) lost a lap serving a pass-through penalty for speeding on pit road during his first green-flag pit stop, as mistakes began to shape the Playoffs—as they invariably do.

William Byron took full advantage of a late on-track incident between Ross Chastain and Kyle Larson to triumph in Sunday's Goodyear 400 Darlington Raceway and become the first three-time winner in the NASCAR Cup Series this season.

For Byron, the victory was sweet redemption for last season's spring race at the Lady in Black, where Joey Logano's bump-and-run denied Byron his first victory at the fabled speedway.

"Yeah, it's pretty amazing," said Byron, who earned the 100^th victory for the No. 24 team. "My granddad passed away on Thursday, and just, man, I wish my family could be here. Just things have a way of working out, honestly. It just worked out that way today. We didn't have the best third stage. We just kept battling, and things just kind of come back around.

"Definitely didn't expect this. But just thankful for a great team, and, yeah, just things have a way of working out, and to come back here to Darlington and have it go exactly the other way."

It was a Lap 288 crash between Chastain and Larson—while battling for the lead—that gave Byron the opportunity to collect his seventh career victory.

Taking the inside lane, with Larson beside him, Chastain led the field to a restart after an eight-car wreck necessitated the seventh caution on Lap 281. Chastain drove hard into Turn 1, plowed up the track and wrecked both his No. 1 Chevrolet and Larson's No. 5.

"How does that make any sense, running us into the fence?" Cliff Daniels, Larson's crew chief fumed on the team radio. "That's three races he's taken us out of—the 1 car—three races he's taken us out of."

Chastain took responsibility for the mistake that took him out of the race and relegated Larson to a 20^th-place result.

"Full commit into Turn 1," said Chastain, who finished 29th. "I got really tight and drove up and turned myself. I wanted to squeeze him. I wanted to push him up. We'd been racing back and forth all day. But I definitely didn't want to turn myself."

The incident forced overtime, handed the lead to the driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Byron outran Kevin Harvick in the final two-lap dash.

In a race that included massive wrecks on Laps 194 and 281, Chase Elliott ran third, followed by Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, Harrison Burton, Kyle Busch, Justin Haley, Ryan Blaney and Chris Buescher.

In sharp contrast to the aggressive battling between Chastain and Larson, Harvick, whose No. 4 Ford had sustained front-end damage during the Lap 281 wreck, gave Byron plenty of room after the overtime restart on Lap 294.

"We had a good car all day," Harvick said. "We just never could get up towards the front in our Sunny Delight Ford Mustang. Struggled in traffic today, but we were really good at the second half of the run and just struggled at the beginning of the run.

"But we had good track position, then had a bad pit stop under green, and then wound up having everything work out there at the end. Didn't have anything for William. The front is torn up pretty good. But they did a great job and just kind of kept ourselves in the game, and you never know what's going to happen."

Pole winner Martin Truex Jr. had the dominant car for the first half of the race. The driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota handily won the first stage and led a total of 145 laps, but the handling on Truex's Camry tightened up during the second stage, allowing Chastain to pass for the lead on Lap 151.

Truex recovered to challenge Chastain for the Stage 2 victory, but on the final lap of the stage, Chastain braked hard behind a lapped car, bounced off the outside wall and sent Truex spinning toward the apron.

Chastain picked up his fifth stage win of the season, but Truex dropped to 10^th, and his car never recovered after the incident. And though Truex gained four spots on pit road after the sixth caution and restarted third on Lap 281, he was part of the massive eight-car wreck that decimated the field in the first two corners.

"When we got into Chastain there at the end of the second stage going for the win in that, it knocked the toe out, so we were tight from there on out," said Truex, who finished 31st. "Just an unfortunate deal. There was plenty of room there, but he just came off the wall and hit me.

"Like I said, knocked the toe out in the right front. Pretty crappy from there, and then on that restart (Lap 281), I guess I just got real tight and I don't even know who I squeezed into the wall, but I apologize to them. Probably my fault, just got real tight and couldn't stay down the track."

In a race that had more twists and turns than a Victorian melodrama, Erik Jones put the vaunted No. 43 Chevrolet back in Victory Lane for the first time since 2014.

In a remarkable run to the finish in the season's first NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race, Jones held off Denny Hamlin in a 20-lap run to the finish to win the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway for the second time.

The Sunday night race took its toll on more than a handful of Playoff drivers, as Jones became the first non-Playoff driver to win the first postseason event since NASCAR introduced the elimination format in 2014.

The victory was Jones' first of the season, the third of his career, and the first for Petty GMS Racing since that organization was former by merger before the 2022 campaign. The win was No. 200 for the 43 car number, which NASCAR Hall of Famer and car owner Richard Petty drove to seven series championships.

"Richard hasn't been to Victory Lane at Darlington probably since he last won here," said Jones, referencing Petty's 1967 victory in the Southern 500. "It's just awesome. Just so proud of these guys, Petty GMS and (sponsor) Focus Packer Crew.

"We've been so close all year, and I didn't think today was going to be the day. It was going to be a tough one to win, I knew, but no better fitting place. I love this track. I love this race. On that trophy twice, man. I was pumped to be on it once, but to have it on there twice - pretty cool."

The victory was the first in the Cup Series for crew chief Dave Elenz. Jones won his first Southern 500 in 2019, driving for Joe Gibbs Racing but was released after the 2020 season in favor of Christopher Bell. On Sunday night, Jones held off a former teammate in Hamlin, whoran out of time in his pursuit of Jones and finished in the runner-up spot, .252 seconds behind the race winner.

"Well, I mean, I never lost any belief in myself through any of it," Jones said. "I knew I could still do it, and I just knew we needed to grow the program to do it, and we have. We've brought on a lot of great people in the last year. Dave Elenz called a great race today. His first Cup win - that's pretty cool for him.

"I'm excited, man. We've been talking about this day a long time, and it is redemption in a lot of ways. Very fitting that it's here at this race again. I felt like this was the race that saved my job the first time around, and coming back here with this win, I guess it puts you back on the map."

Tyler Reddick ran third, followed by pole winner Joey Logano, who vaulted to the top of the Playoff standings, six points clear of second-place William Byron, who finished eighth on Sunday.

Jones got his chance at the front of the field when Kyle Busch, who had led a race-high 155 laps, suffered a blown engine as he prepared for the final restart. Busch had inherited the top spot when his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Martin Truex Jr., suffered a similar failure on Lap 333 of 367.

But those retirements barely scratched the surface of the drama that unfolded throughout the race. Disaster befell Chase Elliott and Kevin Harvick. Kyle Larson and his team accomplished an amazing salvage job.

And the Playoff picture remained just as uncertain as it had been entering the grueling 500-mile contest at the Lady in Black.

After a catastrophic Playoff opener, Elliott, the regular-season champion, is the series leader no more.

Elliott spun sideways in Turn 2 on Lap 113 - two laps short of the end of Stage 1 - cracked the back of his No. 9 Chevrolet and slid down the track into the path of Chase Briscoe, who couldn't avoid the collision.

Elliott nursed his car to pit road where his team tried in vain to repair the damage, but with the right rear toe link and upper and lower control arms broken, the task was hopeless. The 10-minute time allotment under NASCAR's damaged vehicle policy ran out, and Elliott retired from the race in last place (36th).

The 15-point advantage Elliott carried into the Playoffs was gone. Elliott scored the minimum one point for his efforts at Darlington and fell to ninth in the Playoff standings, 14 points ahead of 16th-place finisher Austin Cindric in 13th.

"I just hit the wall in (Turns) 1 and 2 and broke something in the right-rear," Elliott said succinctly. And how would he approach the next Playoff race at Kansas Speedway? "A lot better than we did today."

A solid run by 2014 series champion Harvick went up in flames on Lap 275. As he lost speed while running ninth, Harvick radioed to his crew, "My rocker panel's on fire."

Flames erupted on both sides of the car. Harvick parked the No. 4 Ford on the apron and scrambled from his smoke-filled cockpit. Harvick exited the race in 33rdplace and dopped to the bottom rung of the Playoff standings, 13 points below the current cut line.

Larson, the reigning series champion, brought his car to pit road on Lap 79, sensing his engine was about to expire. He lost three laps as his team worked under the hood of the No. 5 but returned to the track and the "gremlins" disappeared after a few laps.

Using wave-arounds and his status as beneficiary under caution to advantage, Larson regained the lead lap and finished 12th, averting a major hit in the standings.

Notes:

• The last driver to win a race in the No. 43 was Aric Almirola, who took the car to Victory Lane on July 6, 2014 at Daytona.
• Joey Logano led the first 37 laps from the pole and 64 overall, but an issue with the left front tire cost him valuable time during a green-flag pit stop on Lap 75, and he never regained the track position he lost.
• Ross Chastain lost a lap when he returned to pit road for an unscheduled stop on Lap 160 to address a loose wheel. He finished 20th, one lap down.
• Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Chase Briscoe and Kevin Harvick are the four drivers below the current cut line with two races left in the Round of 16.

Executing a decisive bash-and-run on the next-to-last-lap of Sunday’s Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, Joey Logano wrested the lead from William Byron and ended a NASCAR Cup Series 40-race winless streak dating to March of 2021 at the Bristol Dirt Track.

After Logano gave Byron’s Chevrolet a jolt entering Turn 3 on the white-flag lap, Byron shot up the track into the outside wall and fell back to 13th at the finish.

Driving a No. 22 Ford sporting the throwback paint scheme of his first quarter-midget racer, Logano beat runner-up Tyler Reddick to the finish line by .775 seconds to earn his first victory at Darlington and the 28th of his career.

Logano now has won at least one race in 11 consecutive Cup Series seasons.

“Yeah, you’re not going to put me in the wall and not get anything back,” Logano said, apparently referring to earlier contact from Byron’s car. “That’s how that works. Man, super proud of the Shell-Pennzoil team, getting a victory here in Darlington. You know what it’s like—I’ve never won here in a Cup race before.

“So proud of this race team. Great execution all day long. I’ll tell you what, the coolest thing is getting this car into Victory Lane. This is the car where it all started for me back in ’95 in a quarter midget. Really, honestly, all the young kids racing out there right now—this could be you.”

An incensed Byron clearly thought Logano crossed the line with his aggressive maneuver.

“We were really close off of (Turn) 2, and I think it spooked him and got him tight, and he was right against the wall, and I got the lead,” Byron said of a restart on Lap 268. “He’s just an idiot. He does this stuff all the time. I’ve seen it with other guys.

“He drove in there 10 miles an hour too fast, and with these Next-Gen cars, he slammed me so hard it knocked the whole right side off the car, and no way to make the corner.

“Yeah, he’s just a moron. He can’t win a race, so he does it that way. I don’t know, we’ll… yeah, it was close racing on the restart. We were faster than him. Obviously, at the end the right rear (of Byron’s car) started to go away, and, yeah, he didn’t even make it a contest.”

Justin Haley ran third, followed by Kevin Harvick, who posted his 13th straight top-10 result at the Lady in Black—a track record. Chase Elliott started at the rear of the field in a backup car and finished fifth.

A massive wreck off Turn 2 on Lap 261 of 293 took out more than a handful of frontrunning cars and set up the final restart. Martin Truex Jr., who had restarted on the inside of Row 2, lost momentum in the corner and slid back between the Chevrolet of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and the Ford of Kevin Harvick.

Truex’s Toyota made slight contact with Stenhouse’s Camaro in the outside—but enough to start Truex spinning sideways. The wreck collected the cars of Kurt Busch, Bubba Wallace, Cole Custer, Denny Hamlin, Erik Jones, Chase Briscoe, Ryan Blaney and Elliott, which suffered damage ranging from minimal to terminal.

Ill fortune led to the demise of three of the strongest cars before the race reached the halfway point. On Lap 114 second-place starter Kyle Larson brought his No. 5 Chevrolet to pit road and retired with engine failure.

Lap 167 brought the downfall of Kyle Busch, who had led 19 laps. The No. 6 Ford of Brad Keselowski pounded the outside wall in Turn 2 and collected the Toyota of Busch, eliminating both cars from the race.

Ross Chastain collected the second stage win of his career in Stage 2, but his elation was short-lived. Moments after the subsequent restart on Lap 196, Chastain’s No. 1 Chevrolet spun to the inside of Hamlin’s Toyota near the exit of Turn 2 and nosed into the inside wall, ending his race.

“We were fighting the balance all day,” Chastain said. “We were racing with those guys for the lead. I just thought I could run the bottom there off of Turn 2 at the exit of the patch (of new asphalt). I just got loose on the transition and spun out.”

By the time the race ended, 13 of the 36 cars already were in the garage, equaling the number of DNFs last month at Talladega.

Logano’s victory in a Ford kept Chevrolet winless at Darlington since Harvick’s victory there in 2014.

Holding off regular-season champion Kyle Larson throughout a thrilling final green-flag run in Sunday's Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, Denny Hamlin is winless in 2021 no more.

Hamlin maintained control of his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota as Larson buried his No. 5 Chevrolet into Turns 3 and 4 on the final lap. Larson gave Hamlin a tap, but Hamlin blocked the top lane and got to the finish line .212 seconds ahead of the runner-up.

"He drove it in past the limit of the car and tires," Hamlin said of Larson's banzai charge. "I knew he was coming. I was a little conservative on that last lap because I had that four-car-length lead."

The victory was Hamlin's first of the year after a winless 26-race regular season. He won for the fourth time at Darlington and for the 45th time in his career to earn an automatic berth into the Round of 12 in the NASCAR Cup Series

Hamlin kept Larson at bay over the final two restarts but couldn't pull away to a comfortable lead.

"We got to the white (flag), and I was like, ‘Well, I haven't been able to gain on him now, I'm going to try something,'" Larson said of the desperation try he labeled a "video-game move." "Honestly, got to his bumper too quick. I was hoping he was going to run that diamond to kind of be safe and I could skirt to his outside, but gave everything I had.

"I didn't want to wreck him. I just wanted to try to get to his outside there, but he did a great job not really making any mistakes during the last run, and I was having to push really hard in second to try and just stay with him."

Larson led 156 of the 367 laps to Hamlin's 146. Hamlin won the first stage and Larson the second.

Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. caught a break when Ryan Blaney spun in Turn 4 on Lap 318 while the two JGR drivers stayed on the track trying to stretch the cycle of pit stops. Truex beat Hamlin off pit road but was flagged for speeding, and Hamlin held the top spot the rest of the way.

Non-Playoff driver Ross Chastain finished third, followed by Truex, who recovered from the penalty and an earlier loose wheel to run fourth. Playoff drivers Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano were fifth through eighth, respectively, but for other title hopefuls, the race brought disaster.

Two-time series champion Kyle Busch suffered an early exit and a blow to his hopes of winning a third title. Contact with the No. 3 Chevrolet of Austin Dillon sent Busch's No. 18 Toyota rocketing into the outside wall in Turn 2, causing irreparable damage.

Busch fell out in 35th place and now faces an uphill battle to advance to the Round of 12.

"It wasn't the 3's (Dillon's) fault," Busch said. "Just take our lumps, you know. We were running like (crap), and that's what you get when you run like (crap). Shouldn't be there."

Three-fourths of the Hendrick Motorsports armada took a major hit as well. Alex Bowman scraped the wall on Lap 14 and stayed on the track, hoping to make it to the competition caution on lap 25. But a tire rub proved disastrous, sending Bowman's Chevy into the Turn 4 wall, and damage the No. 24 Camaro of teammate William Byron in the process.

Bowman was able to continue and finished 26th, but Byron wasn't as fortunate. After recovering to run in the top 10, Byron cut a left front tire on Lap 200, crashed hard into the Turn 1 wall and exited the race with a 34th-place finish.

"That was a big hit," Byron acknowledged. "It looked like on that (previous) pit stop, it looked like we dropped the jack and the left front was still finishing up. I took off and everything felt OK. I went to pass the No. 00 (Quin Houff) or somebody down the frontstretch 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."

Reigning series champion Chase Elliott fell out in 31st place after slamming the outside wall on Lap 327 in a three-wide melee in Turn 1 with Bubba Wallace and Christopher Bell.

An early wreck put a dagger to Michael McDowell's slim championship chances. On Lap 31, McDowell's No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford broke loose behind Erik Jones' Chevrolet in Turn 2, smacked the outside wall and careened nose-first into the inside SAFER barrier.

McDowell exited the race, his car destroyed and his title hopes hanging by a thread.

"The 43 (Jones) kind of got everybody jammed up," McDowell said after exiting the infield care center. "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 (of new asphalt in Turn 2) 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."

Bowman, Busch, Byron and McDowell fell below the current cut line for the Round of 12. Elliott leaves Darlington 10th in the Playoff standings.

In the final stage of Sunday's Goodyear 400, Kyle Larson turned a Martin Truex Jr. cakewalk into a study in suspense, but Larson couldn't keep Truex out of Victory Lane in the 12th NASCAR Cup Series race of the season.

Truex swept the first two stages and led 248 laps to win his third event of the season and remain the only multiple winner in the series this year.

But after the final sequence of pit stops, Larson — who gained time by pitting one lap earlier than Truex — closed the leader's advantage to .170 seconds on Lap 266 of 293 as the drivers worked stubborn lapped traffic.

Larson stayed within a second of Truex until the final few laps, when Truex finally pulled away to win by 2.571 seconds. No previous stage winner had ever gone on to claim victory at Darlington.

"We just had a good balance," said Truex, who committed to run the top of the track throughout the race. "The car would do what I wanted it to do. I just had to manage those long runs. It was really loose that last run. I was nervous when the 5 (Larson) was catching us. We got mired in some traffic there, and that's always tough …

"What an awesome team we have. Hopefully, we can keep this rolling."

The victory was the second at Darlington for the driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota and the 30th of his career. Truex was elated to win another race with the high-horsepower, low-downforce competition package used at Darlington this year.

"I think the most important part is we are winning with the low downforce package, which most of the Playoff races we run are," Truex said. "Phoenix was a really, really big confidence booster for us - to go there and win.

"I feel like we've carried it since there. We just have to keep this thing going. Guys are doing a really good job all around. It's so fun to drive race cars like that."

Kyle Busch finished third, 6.209 seconds back. Fourth-place William Byron was 17.067 seconds in arrears and fifth-place Denny Hamlin was 21.939 seconds behind his JGR teammate, as only nine cars remained on the lead lap at the finish.

Larson lopped two seconds off Truex's advantage during the final exchange of pit stops but couldn't pull off a winning pass.

"I was surprised that I was able to get to him," said Larson, who posted his sixth top-10 result in seven Darlington starts and improved his average finish at the track to a series-best 6.0.

"I caught him, I closed on pit road, was riding and actually had an opportunity to get by and thought I'd stay patient, and he was better on the long run."

As close as Larson made it near the end, the first two stages were an absolute runaway.

Truex's Camry was decked out in an Auto-Owners Insurance paint scheme. The only other time Truex had used that livery at Darlington was in 2016 — and that was the only time he had ever won a Cup race at the track.

But the nod to 2016 wasn't the only throwback involved. In harkening to 2016, Truex was recalling a season in which he achieved the sort of dominance he enjoyed on Sunday afternoon.

At Charlotte Motor Speedway, the 40-year-old from Mayetta, New Jersey, put a permanent stamp on the Cup Series with an utterly dominant run in the Coca-Cola 600. Truex led 392 of 400 laps, translating to a NASCAR-record 588 of 600 miles.

By the time he took the green/checkered flag on Saturday to complete a sweep of the first two stages, Truex had a 14.516-second lead over Kyle Busch.

And for much of Sunday afternoon, the race threatened to present a similar outcome — until Larson intervened.

Kevin Harvick came home sixth, followed by reigning series champion Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney and Chris Buescher, the last driver on the lead lap.

Byron's fourth-place finish was his 10th straight top-10 result this season.