Defending champ Chase Briscoe conquers Southern 500 again, advances to Round of 12

Chase Briscoe turned in one of the most dominating performances of 2025 and defended his title in the Cook Out Southern 500 Sunday night, winning the NASCAR Cup Series' Round of 16 playoffs opener at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, S.C.

Last year's victor at one of NASCAR's crown-jewel races, which qualified him for the playoffs, the Mitchell, Ind., native conquered The Track Too Tough to Tame again by scorching the 38-car field and leading a career-high 309 laps.

His No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota held a 0.409-second advantage over Tyler Reddick's Toyota, which mounted a dive-bomb try on the final lap between Turns 3 and 4.

Briscoe's fourth career Cup win advances him to the Round of 12.

Legacy Motorsports drivers Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek finished third and fourth followed by AJ. Allmendinger.

With the first dozen positions occupied by playoff drivers, polesitter Denny Hamlin, a five-time Darlington winner, led them to green. However, Josh Berry, in his first playoff start, looped the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford in Turn 2 on Lap 1 for the first caution. Berry got into Reddick's No. 45 Toyota, which suffered slight damage.

Briscoe grabbed the lead early Hamlin, his JGR teammate, and dominated 85 of the 115 laps in Stage 1. Reddick rebounded to come in second followed by Hamlin, Ross Chastain and Bubba Wallace as the top points earners.

The 367-lap race around the high-banked superspeedway restarted with the Toyotas of Hamlin and Briscoe swapping the lead.

Cody Ware spun to bring out the fourth caution. After Ryan Blaney was spun for the fifth yellow, the No. 19's domination continued in easy fashion, topping Reddick, two-time Southern 500 winner Jones, Kyle Larson and Allmendinger for the top-five positions in Stage 2.

With a healthy lead, Briscoe pitted on Lap 275 and got back at it while the stops cycled around to Chastain and Hamlin taking turns at the point. Briscoe's Toyota again found the lead and lapped title contender Chase Elliott with 70 laps left in the playoff opener.

Derek Kraus' engine failure brought out the seventh caution and sent the leaders to pit road again with just over 50 laps remaining.

--Field Level Media