(photo credit Leon Hammack)

There’s one huge difference between Chase Briscoe’s approach to the Cook Out Southern 500 last year and his mind-set this year.

The level of expectations is exponentially higher for Sunday’s opening Playoff race at the Lady in Black (6 p.m. ET on USA, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

For the first time in his NASCAR Cup Series career, Briscoe believes he has a championship-caliber team.

That wasn’t the case last year when the Southern 500 was the final race in the regular season. Briscoe needed a victory just to make the Playoffs, and after a near-perfect run, he took the checkered flag and qualified for the postseason.

Last year, Briscoe drove for moribund Stewart-Haas Racing. This year, he’s driving the potent No. 19 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, an organization that expects to win and compete for championships.

“Last year, nobody expected us (to win), and truthfully, as a race team, we weren’t coming into Darlington and being like ‘This is our weekend,’” Briscoe said. “At SHR (Stewart-Haas), you really couldn’t go to the race track each weekend and say we are going to win this weekend, or we are going to have a shot at it.

“We knew that we would be good, because we had been solid at Darlington, but I don’t think we thought we would have race-winning speed, I would say. So, this (the Playoff race) feels more pressure-packed than a win-or-go-home situation, because we all kind of made up our minds that we were probably going home anyways, and it just so happened that we won the race, and we were in.”

TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!