1. Trophy or No Trophy, the Regular Season Championship Still Matters
When NASCAR shifted back to the Chase for the Championship to crown its king this season, it also quietly did away with the not as coveted regular season championship. Ostensibly, it was to put the focus on the one true champion in the fall, but you can’t help but think that it may have been partially to avoid the awkward spectacle of both the race winner and the points leader after 26 races both receiving trophies at the end of the same event.
But despite Denny Hamlin not getting any silverware to add to what is already a crowded case (or maybe a whole room for him), it seems the change is mostly a matter of semantics. The regular season champion under the playoff system had plenty of room for error, and it appears the same under The Chase one race in.
Much was made about Hamlin’s points lead shrinking thanks to the Chase reset to just 25 over Ryan Blaney. Yet that cushion still proved sufficient to protect him after he came home 18th at Darlington. It helped that Hamlin scored 16 stage points, finishing third in each of the first two stages, but his existing lead did its part as well.
Race winner Christopher Bell moved up to second, Blaney trimmed his deficit a bit, and Tyler Reddick moved inside 25 points back too. They earned those spots, but one subpar finish didn’t put Hamlin behind the 8-ball, which is fitting since he also earned that right over the first 26 races. Calling it the No. 1 seed or regular season champion doesn’t matter, it’s just nice to see the system working like it should.
2. What Has Gotten Into Josh Berry?
Back on June 10, Josh Berry revealed that the day before, Wood Brothers Racing informed him that he would not be back to drive its No. 21 Ford in 2027. The next six NASCAR Cup Series races made that decision appear to be an understandable one, as Berry limped to a 30.5 average finish between Pocono and North Wilkesboro.
They also gave little indication of what was to come next. Since the Brickyard 400, Berry has been arguably the hottest Cup driver to not win a race, ripping off six straight top-10 results (all ninth or better). Our stat guru Stephen Stumpf says he’s the first Wood Brothers driver to pull that off since David Pearson in 1976, and that more than a quarter of Berry’s career Cup top 10s have come during this stretch.
It’s easy to snidely suggest that if Berry had done this sooner, he wouldn’t need to look for a ride for next season. But what’s done is done, and all the 35-year-old wheelman can do is impress enough people to give him his next opportunity.
Is it working? We may not know for sure until an announcement is made and Berry is named the driver somewhere for ’27, but what he’s doing now sure can’t hurt, and he acknowledged as much after Darlington.
3. Is Anyone Really Going to Do Something About Carson Hocevar?
Much of the time, the fuss over Carson Hocevar feels a bit much. He’s aggressive, for sure, but plenty of fans enjoy that. He’s crossed the line a few times, but from the chatter about him in some online corners, you would think he’s wrecking other drivers on a weekly basis.
Except at Darlington he really did wreck Brad Keselowski, or at least that’s sure how it looked on TV.
Keselowski was fit to be tied, all but vowing revenge after the race. Yet we’ve been here before: Someone ends up on the wrong end of a run-in with Hocevar, more or less hints retaliation is coming, and then … nada. It’s the poster child for the “nothing ever happens” crowd.
Maybe this time will be different. Perhaps the No. 6 will spot the No. 77 coming across its nose in the next few weeks and Keselowski will be the one who ends up saying “he spun” in the aftermath.
Recent history suggests he won’t. That said, Keselowski isn’t in The Chase and may feel he has less to lose than some others Hocever has angered if he takes action. It’s a fun subplot to track over the final nine races if nothing else.
4. Please Appreciate Drivers Pushing Other Drivers, Even If They Aren’t From the Same Manufacturer
We’re not talking about pushing in the draft at places like Daytona or Talladega, where drivers try to stick together by manufacturer unless there’s no other choice. What I mean is pushing other cars on the track after a red flag when they can’t re-fire their engines.
This isn’t a hypothetical because it just happened at Darlington. When the race was briefly red flagged in the final stage for weather, neither Reddick nor his 23XI Racing teammate Bubba Wallace could get their cars started again.
NASCAR generally sends trucks to get cars rolling again under these circumstances, but in this case the stranded drivers got assists. Reddick was pushed by Chase Elliott (despite his team asking him not to because it was worried he would burn up his clutch), while Wallace got help from good buddy Blaney and called it “brotherly love.”
The common thread is that neither of the good Samaritans were Toyota drivers. It didn’t matter in this case and it shouldn’t. The NASCAR garage is a real community despite the competition and the occasional flaring tempers, and this is a great example of how that manifests on race day.
5. Ryan Preece Watch: Top 10 to Start The Chase
Even though a crazy amount of things would need to happen to allow him to make a run at the Cup Series title, Ryan Preece is one of the most interesting stories to track simply because of his called shot victory to make the field in the first place.
The big question was whether that was a flash in the pan or the start of something bigger. After one race, it’s leaning ever so slightly toward the latter. Preece never led any laps in the Southern 500, but he did nab a few points in stage one and ended up a very respectable 10th.
That was enough to move him up one spot to 15th place at the expense of William Byron, whose miserable finish dropped him three spots. Unfortunately, Preece actually lost a few points on leader Hamlin, sliding from 100 back to 104 thanks to Hamlin’s superior stage points haul.
Can Preece keep moving up? Watch this space over the next nine weeks.
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