DARLINGTON, SC – Chase Briscoe went back-to-back in the Cook Out Southern 500 on Sunday at Darlington Raceway, and this year, he did so in absolute dominate fashion.

It was this time last year, Briscoe won his first Cook Out Southern 500, which ultimately became Stewart-Haas Racing’s final-ever victory. On Sunday at Darlington Raceway, he led a whopping 309 laps and held off the hard charging Toyotas of Tyler Reddick and Erik Jones to score his fourth-career NASCAR Cup Series victory and a berth in the Round of 12 of the NASCAR Playoffs.

“Yeah, man, there at the end, that was way harder than it needed to be,” Briscoe said. “Man, just incredible, Bass Pro Shops. As a fan, I’ve watched Martin (Truex Jr.) dominate a lot of races, and it was fun to be behind the wheel of it.

“So cool to win two Southern 500s in a row. This is my favorite race of the year. Just because you race fans, every time we come here the place is sold out, the atmosphere here is like nowhere else.”

Briscoe swept all three stages and throughout the entire race, there was never really a point where he didn’t have the strongest car. He led nearly more laps on Sunday night than he has all year long, so it appears that the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota team is Playoff ready as Briscoe searches for his first series championship. Briscoe has finished inside of the top-two in four of the last eight races.

“Yeah, I think this is definitely what we’re capable of doing,” Briscoe said. “We haven’t been able to go out and dominate a race like that. The potential has been there from day one. Yeah, so thankful once again that Joe Gibbs, Toyota, Johnny Morris, J.P. Morris, to be able to run this red, white and blue Bass Pro Shops car into Victory Lane, it’s the most American brand there is. To have the Star Spangled Banner on this is pretty cool.”

Once again, Reddick came up short at Darlington Raceway. The driver of the 23XI Racing No. 45 Pinnacle Toyota has come so close to winning at the track, Too Tough To Tame over the past few years, but on Sunday night, he had to settle for a second-place finish. The finish however, is a great start for the team that just barely grabbed the 15^th spot in the NASCAR Playoffs.

“He (Briscoe) could fire off a whole lot better,” Reddick said. “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 has 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, going for it, like I did last spring, doing the wrong thing, ending our day and finishing 36th.”

Legacy Motor Club’s Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek finished third and fourth respectively. The fourth-place finish for Nemechek is a career-best at Darlington. AJ Allmendinger rounded out the top-five. Completing the top-10 was Playoff contenders Bubba Wallace and Denny Hamlin, as well as Kyle Busch, Carson Hocevar and Chris Buescher.

Sunday’s race marked only the fourth time in series history Toyota has swept the top-four finishing positions. The last time the manufacturer did so was Bristol in 2017. Toyota had never held six of the top-seven finishing positions until Sunday.

The caution flew on seven occasions for 37 laps.

The most notable crash occurred on the opening lap, when Playoff competitor, Josh Berry spun in Turn 2. He nearly took out Reddick who got completely sideways but kept going. Berry had a promising start to the day as he began the race in third, but now he’ll have to have no mistakes in the next two races in order to advance to the Round of 12.

“It’s just disappointing,” Berry said. “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’t seen it yet, but I feel like we’re still within striking distance that if we just go have two good weeks, we’ll at least be in the mix once we get to Bristol.”

Playoff contender Ryan Blaney spun out of Turn 4 to bring out the caution on Lap 211. Blaney saved the car and made just slight contact with the inside wall, but he finished 18^th. The good news for Blaney is that he beat eight other Playoffs competitors despite the adversity.

“We had to start in the back and then getting spun off turn four killed the splitter, and then we came from the back to 19th and then the caution came out as soon as we got to pit road and sent us all the way back again,” Blaney said. “Just about everything that could go wrong tonight went wrong. At least we recovered to where we did, which is OK I guess. It just wasn’t a smooth night.”

Looking ahead to the second race of the Round of 16 at World Wide Technology Raceway, Briscoe is locked in to the next round. Hamlin is second in the standings, 43 points to the good, followed by Larson (+38), Reddick (+35), Wallace (+25), William Byron (+25), Blaney (+22), Ross Chastain (+21), Austin Cindric (+12), Christopher Bell (+11), Chase Elliott (+9) and Shane van Gisbergen (+3). Below the Round of 12 cutline is Joey Logano (-3), Austin Dillon (-8), Alex Bowman (-19) and Berry (-19).

The Enjoy Illinois 300 will broadcast live on the USA Network at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, Sept. 7.

Photo Credit: Hunter Thomas/TheFourthTurn.com