{"id":114580,"date":"2025-09-02T16:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T16:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/114580\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T16:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T16:07:09","slug":"nascar-insiders-react-to-first-lap-wreck-problems-for-playoff-drivers-at-darlington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/114580\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR insiders react to first lap wreck, problems for playoff drivers at Darlington"},"content":{"rendered":"

Josh Berry\u2018s Southern 500 was one he\u2019d love to forget. Berry qualified third for Sunday\u2019s NASCAR<\/a> Cup Series playoff opener at Darlington Raceway, but that\u2019s where the positives of the weekend end. <\/p>\n

His No. 21 Ford bottomed out in the first corner of Lap 1, turning him into Tyler Reddick and sending him sliding down the backstretch. Berry, thought to be a dark horse contender at Darlington, finished last. Freddie Kraft, spotter for Bubba Wallace, shared his take of Berry\u2019s night on Monday\u2019s \u201cDoor Bumper Clear<\/a>\u201d podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sucks for them,\u201d Kraft said. \u201cJosh is a really talented race car driver, obviously, and qualifies good. That\u2019s a place that lends itself to Josh\u2019s strengths \u2014 taking care of tires and managing the race. It just sucks that he qualified so good and now\u2026 he\u2019s [last in the playoff standings].\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a struggle for Berry for some time. Since his win in March at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, he has just four top 10s and zero top 5s. They were hopeful they could turn it around in the postseason, but they never got the chance to do much at Darlington. Berry now finds himself 16th in the playoff standings, -19 below the cutline.<\/p>\n

Darlington was a struggle for several playoff drivers<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just took off there,\u201d Berry said after the race. \u201cObviously, it\u2019s the first corner, you\u2019re just getting up to speed. The car bottomed out five or six times and just wrecked. It was definitely unexpected. We didn\u2019t 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 from the 1, and you could tell that it bottomed out four or five times and you can\u2019t save them when they\u2019re like that. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 It\u2019s just disappointing. It looked like a lot of people had a bad night, which we know how this goes. We just need to avoid a bad night. I obviously haven\u2019t seen it yet, but I feel like we\u2019re still within striking distance that if we just go have two good weeks, we\u2019ll at least be in the mix once we get to Bristol.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest surprise from Darlington was the collective ineffectiveness of Hendrick Motorsports. William Byron,\u00a0Kyle Larson,\u00a0Chase Elliott\u00a0and\u00a0Alex Bowman\u00a0\u2014 all playoff drivers \u2014 all failed to finish inside the top 15.\u00a0Elliott\u00a0wasn\u2019t full of much confidence<\/a>\u00a0after the race, while Bowman described his run as a \u201cshitty, unacceptable day on all fronts<\/a>.\u201d TJ Majors, spotter for Brad Keselowski, questioned if they got worse once the sun went down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe passed the 5 [and] the 24 with about 15 laps left. The 9 as well, they were all falling off hard,\u201d Majors said. \u201cThey looked OK in the beginning \u2014 not like win the race \u2014 but they were competitive. I don\u2019t know if the track when the sun went down, they got worse as it went along or something. They definitely weren\u2019t strong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Berry\u2018s Southern 500 was one he\u2019d love to forget. Berry qualified third for Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Cup Series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-114580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}