The Chase is back and it officially starts this weekend at Darlington Raceway with five Ford drivers looking to make the annual Cook Out Southern 500 their first step towards a NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Austin Cindric, Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece are all in contention as Ford goes for its fourth championship in the last five years. But what makes this season different is that for the first time in 13 years, the champion will be determined by a 10-race Chase as opposed to the bracketed multi-round elimination format seen in years past. That means consistency and staying away from major mistakes will play a key role in who wins the title.
“I think it’s a little bit of a different mentality shift than what it’s been in the past. You’re trying to put 10 good weeks together and you’re probably not going to be able to afford a bad week because it’s going to be really hard to recover from it,” said Blaney, who enters the 16-driver Chase as the second seed after a regular season that saw him win three times, including Ford’s 750th Cup Win at EchoPark Speedway in July. “If you have a bad week early on, you have to realize that you do have time to make it up if you can string some really good runs together. I like the consistency side of it. It’s a little bit of a shift just trying to not have bad days.”
Meanwhile, Logano will look to add a Southern 500 trophy to his collection after winning the Goodyear 400 at Darlington in 2022. He’d also like to continue a trend that has seen him win all three of his championships in even years (2018, 2022 and 2024), but he’ll have some ground to make up as the ninth seed.
“Darlington is special no matter when it is,” said Logano. “The Southern 500 is a crown jewel in my opinion and probably one of the three biggest races that we have all year in my book. The fact that it’s in the Chase does add more to it, obviously.”
Cindric has made the postseason in all but one of his five full-time Cup seasons and echoed his Penske teammate’s thoughts regarding Sunday’s opener.
“I don't think there's a more mentally challenging race than the Southern 500,” he said. “There's no single area that isn't important to have in your race car in order to run well at Darlington and looking at it from a Chase perspective, we’re trying to all get out on the right foot. I think, for us, it's definitely one that we're looking forward to getting back to. It's a very fun racetrack and a very rewarding place to get a good result.”
No driver, however, may be hotter than Ryan Preece, who erased a 50-point deficit with two races remaining in the regular season to claim the final Chase berth, after his first points victory Saturday night in Daytona. The RFK Racing driver will be making his first postseason appearance and plans on riding this current wave of momentum.
“To be in the Playoffs along with Joey, being from Connecticut, being a fighter, it's a big deal for me,” said Preece after his dramatic victory. “Darlington has been a good place for RFK. I’m throwing on my boxing gloves and going in to fight.”
Chris Buescher starts the postseason as the 10th seed in his No. 17 RFK Racing Mustang Dark Horse. He’s been close to victory in recent seasons at Darlington, especially in 2024 before a late-race incident in the Goodyear 400. Despite that, he’s excited about what the track offers for the Chase opener.
“Darlington has been one of my favorite tracks for a really long time. It’s one of the rare instances where I’ve had a track that I’ve really liked that has not always treated us well,” said Buescher. “I haven’t always been able to figure that place out, but I’ve loved it. It’s nice that we’ve had more speed in the last several years to where it’s been easier to say that, but I’ve liked it even through some of the struggles through the years and trying to figure it out. It’s tough. It’s a tricky place.”
Tricky is something that has always been part of Darlington lore ever since the first NASCAR-sanctioned race took place at the track in 1950 and the track started handing out its infamous Darlington stripe. Legends of the sport, including Hall of Famers Curtis Turner, Fred Lorenzen, and Fireball Roberts have won at the ‘Track Too Tough to Tame,’ but the most memorable performance arguably came in 1965 when Ned Jarrett won the Southern 500 by a record 14 laps and two months later claimed Ford’s first Cup Series championship.
“It’s really hard to not make a mistake in that race because it is so grueling, so now it’s going to be even more important.” said Blaney, who is looking for his second championship after winning it all in 2023. “You don’t want to start your Chase off on the wrong foot. That’ll be a really big one, but it’ll be a heck of a way to kick it off, for sure.”
The 2026 Cook Out Southern 500 is scheduled for Sunday, September 6, at 5:00 p.m. ET.
