Harrison Burton and the No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane team ended the 2024 regular season with a 21st-place finish in Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.
Now it’s on to the 10-race, season-ending, championship-deciding Playoffs, where Burton and the No. 21 team will begin as the 14th-seeded team thanks to their win a week ago at Daytona International Speedway.
The Round of 16 of the 2024 Playoffs kick off with next week’s Quaker State 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The Atlanta race will be followed by the other two races – at Watkins Glen and Bristol – after which the bottom four drivers in the Playoff standings will be eliminated from championship contention.
At Darlington, Burton and the No. 21 Mustang Dark Horse started the sold-out race from 24th place and drove into the top 20 in the opening laps. The Motorcraft/Quick Lane Mustang developed a tight handling condition, and Burton ended the first 115-lap Stage in 27th place, one lap down. That Stage ran with just one caution flag for an incident on the track and it flew on Lap 3.
It was more of the same in the second Stage, which ran with no cautions other than at the end of the Stage, so there were few opportunities to work on the No. 21 Mustang and also few opportunities to get back on the lead lap.
Burton ended Stage Two in 25th place, two laps down.
It wasn’t until Lap 315 that a second yellow flag for an incident on the track was displayed, and by that point the team was trapped laps down. Burton was able to move from 25th to 21st in the closing laps.