By PETE IACOBELLI AP Sports Writer
DARLINGTON, S.C. (AP) — NASCAR’s regular season finished with a pair of surprises in winless drivers Harrison Burton and Chase Briscoe pulling off unexpected victories at Daytona and Darlington.
Don’t look for more stunners when the playoffs start next week and NASCAR’s power programs, Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske, dominate the grid with 11 of the 16 drivers who will chase the championship next Sunday in Atlanta.
Throw in Burton and owner Wood Brothers’ connection with Penske, and 75% of the field has blue-blood connections to research, equipment and advanced technology that give their racers most everything they need to succeed.
“I mean, the way I look at it is we got nothing to lose, right?” Briscoe said after his dramatic, late, three-wide pass to win the Southern 500. “If you can win at Darlington, you can win anywhere on the schedule.”
Briscoe gave soon-to-be-shuttered Stewart-Haas Racing, once a power program with championships from Tony Stewart in 2011 and Kevin Harvick in 2014, a final chance to add to that legacy when he passed Kyle Larson and Ross Chastain for the lead, then outran Kyle Busch at the end.
History says it won’t be easy for Briscoe and others non-power players to celebrate in Phoenix when the championship will be awarded in two months.
Drivers from Hendrick Motorsports, JGR and Team Penske have won the past 10 titles.
Hendrick’s lineup features past champions Larson and Chase Elliott along with William Byron and Alex Bowman.
“You work hard all year long to get stage wins, to get race wins to position yourself in the playoffs,” said Larson, the 2021 Cup Series champion who will open as the top seed in Atlanta. “Just keep on doing what we’re doing. Our cars have been fast. Keep it up and hopefully, we can advance on through.”
All four Gibbs drivers reached the playoffs, with Joe Gibbs’ grandson, Ty Gibbs, earning his first playoff berth and 2017 series champ Martin Truex Jr. holding on to the 16th and final spot despite an early wreck that knocked him out of the Southern 500 when his playoff fate was very much in doubt.
Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin each won three times this year.
Ty Gibbs, who turns 22 next month, won the Xfinity Series title in 2022 and now can add to JGR’s five Cup Series crowns.
“I’m very happy to be able to make it,” he said. “We’ll just see what we can do in 10 weeks.”
Penske enters with the past two reigning champions in Joey Logano in 2022 and Ryan Blaney last year. Austin Cindric won his way into the field in June at World Wide Technology Raceway outside of St. Louis.
Blaney is ready to run it back, even though his Southern 500 was cut short when he was taken out early in the wreck with Truex, who took all the blame for the miscue.
Blaney recalled how his title bid got off to a slow start before those final six races when “just about everything went right.”
“You feel like, well, ‘We’ve done this before,’” Blaney said. “That experience, I think, is good for you, your guys, we’ve done this, what are the things that worked really well that we can apply, what are the things we have to be prepared for that can be different and what are things we did poorly that we” can improve this year.
The rest of the field includes 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick, who won the regular-season championship by a point over Larson; Brad Keselowski of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, who won the series title in 2012; and Daniel Suarez, who runs for Trackhouse Racing.
Bring it on, says Briscoe, energized that he and Stewart-Haas have something to race for before the garage is shut for good. If he comes up short, Briscoe likely has more chances down the road since he’s headed to JGR next season to replace Truex, who is retiring after the playoffs.
“We just got to go” and compete, Briscoe said of this playoff run. “If we do what we did (at Darlington), we can beat anybody. It’s just a matter of putting it all together.”
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