Each week, we give five thoughts on the recently completed race weekend. Note: With the arrival of the playoffs, there’s been a format change for the Top 5 over the final 10 races.1. Taking StockFor weeks heading into the playoffs, the theme for drivers discussing Darlington and Round 1 was: Don’t make mistakes. Don’t make mistakes. Don’t make mistakes.Sounds simple, right? Be smooth, do your thing and don’t throw away points with a self-inflicted error. And yet, just like in recent years, the playoffs opened with driver after driver having some sort of issue.There were wall-slams that damaged cars (Christopher Bell), solo spins (Bubba Wallace), speeding penalties (Ricky Stenhouse Jr.), loose wheels (Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin) and out-of-character reactions (Tyler Reddick).As it turned out, only Michael McDowell had a truly playoff-crushing night after his miserable evening ended in a crash and 32nd-place finish. But many of the hurdles drivers and teams faced Sunday were of their own doing.Why would they do this, especially if they knew the risks? Just stay out of trouble and be conservative! Is that really so hard?Well, yes. It is that hard. If drivers and teams don’t push in every area — on track, on pit road and everywhere in between — they’re way off pace and out of contention in this era of spec racing and ultra-tight fields.We can all see the in-car shot of Reddick chasing down Kyle Larson for lap after lap, running so high up the track they’re constantly brushing the wall, and get a sense of the precision this stuff takes. But there’s also a feeling from viewers like, “Hey, maybe don’t push it so much?”But if you ask Larson — who estimated he hit the wall 20 times on Sunday — that’s not a thing. Drivers have to put themselves in those situations or they’ll lose.“I watch broadcasts all the time and people are like, ‘Just give it some room. You don’t have to run right next to (the wall),’” Larson said. “Well, you have a lot less grip when you don’t run right next to the wall.”The concept of taking every available inch is applicable to each aspect of the race. Want to play it conservative on the racing line or pit strategy or squeezing in front of another car or making extra sure the wheels are tight? That’s cool, but have fun running 20th.And that’s often what makes these playoff races so compelling. We can forecast the outcome all we want, but at this time of year, the races are rarely decided on paper or even in practice sessions. When the spotlight shines brightly on mistakes, the human element seems to somehow become even more important.Just ask Hamlin or Kevin Harvick.2. What If?Here are some alternate storylines we’d be talking about today had a few things unfolded differently.If Hamlin’s team doesn’t leave the wheel loose: Hamlin dominates the race, sweeps the stages (along with the weekend as a whole) and wins his way into the next round — sending a firm message this really might be his year after all. The conversation this week would be about a new championship favorite. Yes, Reddick had just passed Hamlin coming out of the pits during that green-flag stop, but we’re not sure if that was because Hamlin was already slowing with his vibration. Either way, Hamlin seemed to have the fastest car — and finishing off a Truex-like victory where he crushed the field would have been quite a statement.If Reddick doesn’t cause a crash and Harvick pits under green: In his final season and in the opener of the playoffs, Harvick seemed this close to a magical moment. Reddick’s team called him to pit road late because they were trying to counter Rodney Childers’ pit call — which very well could have helped the No. 4 car jump Reddick by pitting one lap earlier and given Harvick the track position he needed to win. Can you imagine the storylines had Harvick won the Southern 500? The grandstands would have about fallen down and it would have been one of the most popular victories in years. Instead, Harvick pitted on a closed pit road, was penalized and finished a brutal 19th — putting him below the cutline heading to Kansas. Ouch.If Ross Chastain and his team let frustration get to them in Stage 1: The summer was full of struggles for Chastain and Trackhouse Racing, and Darlington started quite poorly. Chastain got lapped and seemed to lack the speed to even be close to contention. Had the night finished where it started, there would have been much talk about what the heck happened to this group and a suddenly likely first-round exit. But Chastain and his team hung in there and earned only their second top-five finish in nearly four months. That’s not easy to do, particularly in the pressure of the playoffs. We’ve seen plenty of drivers throw their races away by overdriving or pressing in those situations, but championship contenders often find a way to stay in the fight. Chastain did that on Sunday.GO DEEPERKevin Harvick was chasing a storybook Darlington win — then came the pit stop3. Oddities and EndsThe Lady in Blackout? With the inside lights not working in Turns 3 and 4 for a few dozen laps, NASCAR was forced to stop the race when drivers had a difficult time seeing the high line against the wall. But it created one of those bizarre, only-in-NASCAR moments: the field slowly circling the half-lit turns for nearly 10 laps, followed by officials asking drivers if they were OK with going back to green.Huh? NASCAR felt the lack of lighting made it necessary to stop the race in the first place, and now there was a chance to go back to racing before it was fixed? That didn’t make much sense. Thankfully, the tower eventually threw a red flag, and it wasn’t too long before the power company fixed the problem.But the incident was also a reminder of how every little quirk can matter in the playoffs. If it was a regular-season race when something weird happened (like a sign falling flat onto the track), no one would have cared beyond making memes about it (“Me when a solicitor rings the doorbell”). But the lengthy caution allowed Bell’s team to work on repairs and allowed Joey Logano back on the lead lap, which could ultimately make the difference between playoff advancement and elimination.It’s weird to say, but moments like this should almost be expected by now. Even the most unbiased call by officials will favor some competitors while hurting others — sort of like the decision to shorten the Chicago Street Race with darkness approaching. That’s the nature of racing, but it also emphasizes the challenge of applying a playoff format to a sport not conducive to one.Let’s just be glad this happened in Race No. 1 instead of Race No. 10.4. Championship 4castIn this space throughout the playoffs, we’ll take a look at the current power rankings for the Championship 4 and compare them to our pre-playoff picks (Hamlin, William Byron, Truex, Larson).1. Hamlin (pre-playoffs: 1). The No. 11 team showed up with the fastest car and won two stages. There was nothing we saw Sunday to dissuade us from sticking with Hamlin as the title pick for this year, aside from leaving points on the table after the loose wheel.2. Larson (pre-playoffs: 4). The up-and-down season for the No. 5 team looks like “a perfect heartbeat” when plotting Larson’s finishes, according to crew chief Cliff Daniels. But after Darlington, the team is up and earned five crucial playoff points for the next round after they started the postseason at a deficit to the other contenders.3. Byron (pre-playoffs: 2). One of the few playoff drivers to have a clean, uneventful night, Byron finished fourth — not bad at all and certainly a solid performance. But Byron also didn’t lead a lap — for his first time in four races — at Darlington, so we’ll need to keep watching the No. 24 team’s speed next week.4. Truex (pre-playoffs: 3). Um … what the heck was that? Nothing about Sunday’s performance resembled what we knew of the regular-season champion. A combination of lack of speed and mistakes was not how the No. 19 team wanted to open the playoffs. That said, we’ll assume it was an anomaly and they’ll be back to their normal selves at Kansas.Honorable mention: Chris Buescher, Tyler Reddick, Brad Keselowski.5. Best of the Rest• Carson Hocevar was making just his second Cup Series start — in the toughest race of the season, at that — and ended up 17th for Legacy Motor Club in a car that had an average finish of 27.6 this year. Not only that, but Hocevar ran in the top 20 for nearly the entire night and seemed to be mistake-free in doing so. That’s awfully impressive when you consider both his lack of experience (three seasons of Trucks, yes, but only five Xfinity Series starts) and his age (20).• Erik Jones won last year’s Southern 500, but let’s be honest: Given how Legacy’s cars have run in 2023, there seemed to be little chance of a repeat. And yet there was Jones, steadily working his way up after starting 20th and even finishing third in Stage 2. He ended up 10th at the end, but that still gave him a remarkable eight top-10s in 12 career Darlington starts — this for three different teams. It’s another example of how much the drivers can matter at Darlington, which might be NASCAR’s truest test of skill on an oval (especially in the Next Gen Era).• Chase Elliott technically isn’t a playoff driver even though his team is competing for the owners’ championship, and he had a solid eighth-place finish on Sunday. The result moved the No. 9 team from 16th in owner points (seven points below the cutline) to 11th in the standings (three points above the cutline). Despite Elliott saying he needs to personally be better, the 2020 Cup champion has the fifth-best average finish this season (13.0), behind only Truex, Buescher, Byron and Hamlin.GO DEEPER2023 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs: All 16 drivers and their chances to win the title(Photo of Kyle Larson: James Gilbert / Getty Images)
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