NASCAR Crash Course: Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain and Kyle Busch ponder what could have been

It took some time for Bubba Wallace to collect his thoughts after Sunday's Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. For most of the race, the pole sitter had high hopes to win his way into the playoffs, leading a career-high 37 laps at The Track Too Tough To Tame.

Turns out it's still too tough.

"Man, just wasn't good enough for 16th this year," Wallace said after missing the 16-driver playoff cutoff with, ironically, a 16th-place finish. "I hate that. It stinks."

The 23XI Racing driver is one of a handful of heavyweights licking their wounds this week, sitting on the outside of the NASCAR playoffs looking in after a second straight Cup Series upset to close the regular season. It was Chase Briscoe who muscled to the front late at Darlington, pulling an incredible three-abreast move to slide past Chastain and Kyle Larson.

The win launched Briscoe and his soon-to-be-shuttered Stewart-Haas Racing team into an unlikely championship chase despite finishing 17th in the regular-season standings.

"I love the Game 7, heavy-pressure moment," Briscoe said. "For whatever reason, I feel like I do a lot better under those situations."

He rose up while Wallace got knocked out, the victim of a multi-car wreck when Josh Berry and Ty Gibbs made contact up in front of him. That left 23XI in the awkward spot of grieving for Wallace while teammate Tyler Reddick emerged the regular-season champion by just one point.

"I'm still disappointed," 23XI co-owner Michael Jordan said. "I'm disappointed we didn't get both cars in."

He's not the only one. Chastain, second in the standings just two years ago, missed the playoffs altogether after a Hail Mary to stay out on older tires just didn't work out. Once considered one of the sport's most aggressive drivers, using a Mario Kart-style move to advance into the Championship 4, a more-neutered Chastain this year posted only four top-five finishes and 178 laps led.

Then, there's Chris Buescher, who had the Darlington race won this spring before contact with Reddick took them both out of the race. An angry confrontation followed in which Buescher claimed the wreck could mean the difference in him making the playoffs.

Turns out it did. Despite finishing 11th in points, a winless Buescher wound up one of four drivers knocked out by the sport's win-and-you're-in postseason format.

"It's just the system we're all playing in," Buescher said. "We've outrun so many of these cars that are gonna get to run for a championship, but that's the system and we didn't work it right."

No one knows that better than two-time champion Kyle Busch, who was knocked out of the playoffs for the first time since 2012. He ended his season with two straight runner-up finishes, a postseason bid easily within reach in each race.

Instead, he wound up the first loser.

"The amount of second and third-place finishes I have in this Next Gen car is disgusting," Busch said. "It's really, really getting old and it really, really sucks that I can't come out on top."

At least Busch has 10 more races to try and keep alive his 19-year streak of at least one Cup win per season. But the big prize will have to wait another year, joining Wallace, Buescher, Chastain and a whopping seven total drivers who made last year's postseason field only to be frozen out for 2024.

Traffic Report

Green: Chase Briscoe. What Briscoe did at Darlington was incredible: take a lame-duck team, with everyone headed elsewhere for 2025, straight into the playoffs after going seven straight races without a top-10 finish. Wiping out a 93-race winless drought may be just the beginning for a driver who has nothing to lose.

"When you back him in a corner, he's dangerous," Briscoe's crew chief Richard Boswell said. "I love seeing this Chase Briscoe. I cannot wait to race with this Chase Briscoe for the next 10 weeks."

Yellow: Kyle Larson. Larson was dominant at Darlington, leading 263 of 367 laps in a postseason tune-up that left people thinking he's the man to beat.

That said, the defending Southern 500 winner lost a shot at going back-to-back with Briscoe's insane move to the front. It also cost him the regular-season championship by one measly point to Reddick, a playoff bonus that could hurt him down the road.  

Red: Martin Truex Jr. So much for Truex closing his final full-time season with a championship. The 44-year-old is divebombing into the playoffs, failing to finish twice in the last five races while posting zero top-20 results. It's all pointing toward a first-round playoff exit if Truex and crew chief James Small don't get it together quickly.

Speeding Ticket: Tony Stewart. It was impossible for Briscoe's owner to be at the racetrack at Darlington; he was busy at the Toyota U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis while running for Rookie of the Year in NHRA. But after Stewart admitted he didn't even watch NASCAR's race at Daytona last weekend, it's tough to watch a three-time Cup champion and the lifeblood of SHR's four-car program all these years miss such a stirring victory.

Everyone knows Stewart's fallen out of love with NASCAR. It's no secret. But here's hoping, as his team prepares to wind down operations, he finds a way to stomach it and show up during Briscoe's playoff run.  

Oops!

Darlington's biggest incident occurred with less than 25 laps to go. With everyone going at 110 percent, a three-abreast move among Denny Hamlin, Josh Berry and Ty Gibbs led to Berry losing control.

The resulting incident took out Berry, Byron and Noah Gragson while leaving the Gibbs car limping home 20th. Despite still making the postseason by 12 points, that left Gibbs furious at how the racing got a little too aggressive down the stretch.

"We tried to get wrecked that entire lap and then they pretty much finished us off there, which is unfortunate," Gibbs said. "I would expect different, but I don't know what was happening with 30 something to go. It was unfortunate. It's frustrating because I really love this place."