(photo credit Leon Hammack)

Chase Briscoe was perfection in a world of mistakes, a no-funny-business driver in a comedy of errors.

And at the end of the final green-flag run on Sunday night at Darlington Raceway—after a 20-lap stint of unrelenting tension—Briscoe was a back-to-back winner of the Cook Out Southern 500 and a guaranteed participant in the Round of 12 in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.

Briscoe led 309 of 367 laps and swept the first two stages, but he had to hold off a determined charge by Tyler Reddick after the race restarted on Lap 320. Reddick got close in the final 10 laps, driving beneath Briscoe entering Turn 3, but didn’t have the impetus necessary to complete a winning pass.

Briscoe crossed the finish line 0.408 seconds ahead of Reddick and 0.537 seconds ahead of non-Playoff driver Erik Jones in third to secure his second victory of the season, his second at the Lady in Black and the fourth of his career.

“Yeah, I think this is definitely what we’re capable of doing,” said Briscoe, who led Toyota drivers to their third 1-2-3-4 finish in NASCAR Cup history, the last coming at Bristol in 2017. “We haven’t been able to go out and dominate a race like that. The potential has been there from day one.

“So cool to win two Southern 500s in a row… A great way to start our Playoffs. That was a lot of fun.”

Briscoe is the first driver to win consecutive Southern 500s since Greg Biffle accomplished the feat in 2005 and 2006.

John Hunter Nemechek was fourth in his No. 42 LEGACY Motor Club Camry. Chevrolet driver AJ Allmendinger ran fifth, followed by Toyota drivers Bubba Wallace and Denny Hamlin, as Toyota placed six drivers in the top seven positions in a Cup race for the first time.

Driving from the outset with a tire mark on the driver’s side of his car—the result of a Lap 1 collision with Josh Berry—Reddick kept the pressure on Briscoe for the final 20 laps, but Briscoe didn’t buckle.

“We were better than he was on long runs,” Reddick said. “He could fire off a whole lot better. I think that was the difference tonight. I could get close. Yeah, I know we had a long run there, but it just unfortunately seemed like the last run, the balance wasn’t quite as good as it had been the rest of the night on the long run.

“All in all, a really solid night for points in the Playoffs. Really want to win here. It’s frustrating to finish second…”

With Briscoe already qualified for the Round of 12 with the victory, Reddick improved his position to 35 points above the elimination line.

If Briscoe had a night to remember, most of the other 15 Playoff drivers spent the evening recovering from mistakes—or failing to do so.

Wallace had a solid day in finishing sixth in the Playoff opener, ending the evening 21 points above the current elimination line with two races left in the Round of 16.

Hamlin, a four-time winner in the regular season, overcame a slow pit stop on Lap 154 and spent the rest of the race clawing his way back to seventh at the finish.

Playoff drivers Ross Chastain and Austin Cindric came home 11th and 12th, respectively. Chastain’s No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Camaro was the highest finishing Playoff Chevrolet, as all four Hendrick Motorsports drivers were outside the top 15.

Chase Elliott, the 2020 series champion, was the best of the Hendrick lot in 17th and heads for next Sunday’s race at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway just nine points above the elimination line.

Top-seeded Kyle Larson and teammate William Byron ran 19th and 21st, respectively, to hold third and fifth in the Playoff standings, but others weren’t as fortunate.

On the first lap of the race, The Lady in Black struck quickly, and Berry’s championship hopes took a nosedive.

Moments after taking the green flag in the third starting spot, Berry’s No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford broke loose beneath Tyler Reddick’s No. 45 Toyota in Turn 2.

After contact with Reddick’s car, Berry’s Mustang slammed into the outside wall, severely damaging the left rear and the undercarriage. After completing two laps, Berry drove his car to the garage for extensive repairs.

Berry returned to the track 119 laps down but finished last (38th) and fell to 16th in the Playoff standings, 19 points below the elimination line.

“The car bottomed out five or six times and just wrecked,” Berry said. “It was definitely unexpected. We didn’t really fight that too bad in practice. I saw a replay of it when I was sitting in the car while they were fixing it, and you could tell that it bottomed out four or five times, and you can’t save them when they’re like that.”

Alex Bowman was the next of the Playoff drivers to suffer brutal misfortune. Thanks to a malfunctioning air supply to the front tire changer’s pit gun, Bowman spent 40 seconds on pit road during his second green flag stop and was down a lap when pit stops cycled out.

On Lap 93 of the first stage, Briscoe passed Bowman to put the No. 48 Chevrolet two laps in arrears. After three wave-arounds, Bowman finally returned to the lead lap as the beneficiary under caution at the end of Stage 2 (Lap 230).

The driver of the No. 48 Chevrolet couldn’t hold his position in the final stage and finished the race two laps down in 31st, tied with Berry in the standings.

Christopher Bell’s Toyota collided on pit road with the Chevrolet of non-Playoff driver Carson Hocevar on Lap 54. With the handling of his car destroyed, Bell finished 29th, two laps down, and fell to 10th in the Playoff standings, 11 points above the cut line.

Road course titan Shane van Gisbergen was burned by an inopportune caution after running long before pitting in the final stage and finished 32nd, spending most of the 22 Playoff points he earned with four wins during the regular season.

Van Gisbergen is 12th in the standings, just three points ahead of 20th-place finisher Joey Logano, the first driver below the elimination line. Richmond winner Austin Dillon came home 23rd and is 14th on the Playoff grid, eight points behind van Gisbergen.

Check out the results of The Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington.

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