Quartet of underdogs cherish 'rare opportunity' for resets in Cup Series Playoffs

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The complexion of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs field this season features a wide cross-section of experience and backgrounds, but it also includes a handful of drivers who made the most of opportunistic regular-season wins to clinch postseason tickets that otherwise might have been out of reach.

Perhaps no one knows this more than Chase Briscoe, who swooped in for a dramatic, season-saving win in last Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, impeccably timing his first victory of the Cup Series campaign to reach the postseason for the second time in his career. The last time that happened in 2022, Briscoe felt like his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team was lightly regarded as a title contender. So when his name and the label of “underdog” are breathed in the same sentence, he takes it more as motivation than a slight.

“I love being the underdog. I feel like I’ve been the underdog my whole career, and I love feeling like my back is up against the wall,” Briscoe says. “So yeah, I love when people doubt us, don’t think we can do it. It definitely fires me up, motivates me. The last time we were in the playoffs, everybody said we’d be the first team out, and we were four laps away from making the final four. So I know what our team’s capable of, I know what I’m capable of. When everything is executed perfectly, there’s no reason why we can’t be the ones holding up the trophy at the end.”

Briscoe earned his spot among the 16 drivers holding court Wednesday at NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs Media Day, just four days before the 10-race postseason opens with Sunday’s Quaker State 400 (3 p.m. ET, USA, NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM) at Atlanta Motor Speedway. But he’s also one of four drivers who finished the regular season outside the top 16 in the Cup Series standings before the points were reseeded. Briscoe was 17th before the playoffs re-rack, with Daniel Suárez 18th, Austin Cindric 19th and Harrison Burton 34th.

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All four propelled their teams onto the playoff grid with victories, perhaps none more timely than Briscoe’s mad Darlington dash to the checkered flag. The Southern 500 win was a rallying moment for the Stewart-Haas Racing organization, which will cease its Cup Series operations at season’s end but now has a title shot to pursue in its final 10 races.

Briscoe compared his season to the unlikely college basketball run of North Carolina State, which defied the odds in winning the ACC Tournament then plowing through the March Madness brackets for a Final Four appearance this year. For a motorsports-centric comparison, the 29-year-old driver has taken a page from team co-owner Tony Stewart, who reached the 2011 playoffs on a winless skid, but then strung together five wins in 10 weeks to claim his third Cup championship.

“It’s been really cool, just the dynamic at the shop, right?” Briscoe said. “If a Stewart-Haas car didn’t win Sunday night, Tuesday morning when everybody came in after Labor Day, it would have probably been the the gloomiest, darkest shop in the entire industry, and now we’re probably the most electric, fired-up shop — at least the most fired up I’ve ever seen Stewart-Haas.”

“I feel like it’s one of those things that we all internally feel like we can honestly go win the championship, and that’s crazy probably coming from a guy that wasn’t even in the playoffs till two days ago, but I think internally, everybody believes it. We’ve seen Tony do it in 2011 and we’re kind of going with that same mindset of, ‘we can win the Southern 500, why can’t we win more?’ ”

Suárez finished one spot behind Briscoe in the standings before reseeding, and he returns to the site of his playoff-clinching win at Atlanta, where he fended off both Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch in a brilliant, three-wide photo finish in February. His postseason fate was secured, but the performance level lagged for Suárez and his No. 99 Trackhouse Racing team through the spring.

Suárez re-signed with the team last month, but reiterated that both sides were eager to turn the on-track tide. A swing of three consecutive top-10 runs near the end of the regular season helped provide a small measure of optimism.

“We found some stuff in the last couple months,” Suárez said. “A few months ago in May, we were struggling very bad. I believe that we’ve definitely gotten the right direction. With that being said, we are not winning races yet. We still have work to do. Right now, we can compete consistently in the top 10, but we know that to make it to the Championship 4, that’s not going to be enough. We have to continue to push and continue to learn.”

On-track performance aside, it’s been a whirlwind year for Suárez, who won races in NASCAR’s Mexico- and Brazil-based series, got married, achieved dual citizenship, and helped to usher in the Cup Series’ international move to his home country next year in Mexico City.

“Just very, very blessed and very fortunate with a lot of amazing things that have happened to myself this year, winning races, in my personal life, in my professional life, over NASCAR closing the deal to go to Mexico City,” Suárez said. “That’s a dream. For me, that’s been one of my dreams since I came to America, so a lot of amazing things. I’m very, very grateful. I’m very lucky to be in this position. With that being said, on the competition side, you always want more. It doesn’t matter if I have had five wins or 10 wins or one win. You always want more, and we have to continue to work. The next 10 weeks are the most important 10 weeks of the year, and I’m planning on giving everything we’ve got to give it a heck of a run.”

Cindric’s playoff path came by virtue of his victory at World Wide Technology Raceway, and he was the first of three Team Penske drivers to clinch playoff berths in the month of June. That was only his second top-five finish in the regular season, but his campaign starts anew this weekend.

“Honest, I don’t really feel a ton of pressure. I feel like we’re playing with house money,” Cindric said. “The points reset, we’re right in the middle of everything. We’re seeded 10th, two points to the good. I couldn’t really ask for more, based on the season we’ve had. So I’m excited for it. It’s a great opportunity, and anything from here, I feel like is a bonus, and I’m not saying that just to sound content, like we have an opportunity to go all the way, and that’s exciting.”

Cindric joked that he had set two personal goals at the start of the year — qualifying for the playoffs and breaking 100 in his golf game. He said Wednesday that he’s 1-for-2 so far, shooting a 101 just two weeks ago, but that he sees similarities in his approach to both sports.

“I feel like both my golf game and my playoffs, my mentality to get to the next step is to have limited mistakes,” Cindric says. “I feel like the first two rounds of the playoffs are all about not taking yourself out of it. I feel like if you get to the Round of 8, that’s where you’ve got to find the next gear. That’s where you’ve got to try and win a race to expect to be in the Championship 4. It’s no different than with my golf game. I have the ability to make contact with the ball and make the damn thing go straight. Just every once in a while, I’ll take a chunk of earth out before I ever even touch the ball.”

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No one might resemble the underdog mentality more than Burton, who rose from below the top-30 mark in Cup Series points into playoff eligibility with his stunning drive to victory at Daytona in the regular season’s next-to-last race. That win was his first, and the 100th for the venerable Wood Brothers Racing No. 21 team.

Burton and the Wood Brothers will part ways at the end of the season, and Josh Berry will step in for the No. 21 Ford team in 2025. But the 23-year-old driver has ambitions to finish out his three-year tenure strong, and he doesn’t bristle when tagged with an underdog designation.

“If I was not a part of this team, I would say the same thing, right?” said Burton, who will make his 100th Cup Series start Sunday at Atlanta. “I mean, you can’t help but look at where we were in points, look at how our season had gone, look at the fact that I was on my way out of my job. They were making changes because the performance wasn’t there — and I love them, they love me as a person, but we didn’t perform the way we needed to. But now, we have this great opportunity to reset all that. We have a great opportunity to kind of be born again, and it’s like, ‘OK, whole new season right here. Let’s go.’ That is a rare opportunity in sports — a rare opportunity in life, really — to get to do that. So I’m going to make the most of that. I know my race team is making the most of it.

“I was at the shop on the way here, and I got to go there for a little bit and those guys are just fired up, and that’s so fun. It’s so fun to be a part of a team that’s fighting for something like we are. We’re going to use that energy in a positive way.”