DARLINGTON, N.C. -- All 16 teams entered the playoff expressing optimism about their chances to contend for the title. One race later, several left Darlington Raceway looking for answers after a frustrating night race.
"It's a bit of a head scratcher to try to understand," defending champion Joey Logano said after a 20th-place finish. "I don't know where we are in points, but it's obviously not the day we wanted.
"We just did a good job of not making a bad day worse."
Logano, like many drivers with a Darlington win on the resume, headed to the historic track with the belief that he would contend for the win. This did not happen. His No. 22 Team Penske Ford did not have the speed or handling to really do anything beyond ride around.
This issue extended to teammate Ryan Blaney, who also dealt with multiple problems. A pit road incident involving Christopher Bell and Carson Hocevar trapped Blaney in his stall. He lost several positions.
He then spun in the final stage and damaged the splitter before later falling victim to an ill-time caution. He finished 18th as one of 10 playoff drivers to finish worse than 15th.
That could've been much worse for @Blaney. pic.twitter.com/xUdxuzObVo
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) September 1, 2025
"Just about everything that could go wrong tonight went wrong," Blaney said. "At least we recovered to where we did, which is OK I guess. It just wasn't a smooth night."
The other two drivers representing Ford -- Josh Berry and Austin Cindric -- had issues as well. Cindric had a slow pit stop and some damage from some restart incidents. He salvaged a 12th-place finish.
Berry, however, spun and wrecked on the opening lap of the playoff race. He spent more than one hour in the garage as the team made repairs. He eventually returned to the track more than 120 laps down. He finished the race in 18th place.
Over on the Chevrolet side, speed and handling problems plagued numerous drivers. Others had miscues on pit road that compounded the problem.
Alex Bowman is the prominent example as he started the race in 29th place and struggled with handling early. He then had a 40-second pit stop due to a disconnected air gun hose that dropped him two laps behind the leaders. The crew lost precious time looking for the reason why the gun did not work.
Bowman temporarily returned to the lead lap, but the handling issues persisted. He ultimately finished 31st and two laps behind the leaders.
"Just a sh****, unacceptable day, on all fronts," Bowman said on pit road. "We weren't great when we unloaded, then we didn't qualify well. Got caught up in (the Berry crash) a little bit, lost the track position we had. Just kind of fell apart from there."
The setup issues did not exist solely on the No. 48 team. All four Hendrick Motorsports drivers spent the night essentially out of contention, especially as they dealt with issues on pit road. Kyle Larson finished 19th after a night he called average.
Chase Elliott finished 17th after struggling with handling. He and the No. 9 team also fell victim to an ill-timed caution after running long in stage 2. William Byron finished 21st after dealing with issues on the track and a loose wheel on pit road that forced him to back up and lose several positions.
"We just struggled all night," Byron said. "I thought the short run was a struggle. I was hoping we'd be able to pay on the backend and have some long run pace, but we would just fall off a cliff.
"A lot of the time, the pit cycles would kind of save us where we could just pit right when we started to struggle, but the last run was really long. As good as we normally are here, it's definitely a bummer. ...We've definitely got some work to do."
That wasn’t a fun night at Darlington. We changed the car from yesterday and right away struggled with the balance. The guys didn’t give up on tuning on it and tried something different with strategy, but got a caution at the wrong time and couldn’t rebound from it! pic.twitter.com/DPi0kBxCdb
— Shane van Gisbergen (@shanevg97) September 1, 2025
What about Shane van Gisbergen? He did not have the handling he needed at Darlington, and the team could not fully address the issue as the 367-lap race continued. The timing of a late caution then trapped him two laps down in the final stage.
Austin Dillon, who won Richmond to lock up a spot in the playoffs, started the Southern 500 in a solid position. He qualified ninth. However, he did not remain there. He did not have the handling he needed throughout the night, and then he lost more positions with a slow pit stop in stage 2.
"We started OK and then we just had issues throughout the race," Dillon said. "We got too tight in that one run and just couldn't overcome it.
"We kind of got it back going the other direction; made some passes and got up to around 18th. We hit pit road and the caution came out. It was just unfortunate. We just struggled with our No. 3 BPS/Winchester Deer Season XP Chevrolet and didn't execute like we needed to."
The opening race of the playoffs always disrupts perfectly laid plans. Yet, the playoff teams did not expect to be looking for solutions this early, especially as they head to World Wide Technology Raceway for only the fourth time.