2025 Cook Out Southern 500

The 2025 Cook Out Southern 500, the 76th running of the event, was a NASCAR Cup Series race held on August 31, 2025, at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina on the speedway, it was the 27th race of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, first race of the playoffs, and the final Crown Jewel of the year.
Chase Briscoe won the race. Tyler Reddick finished 2nd, and Erik Jones finished 3rd. John Hunter Nemechek and A. J. Allmendinger rounded out the top five, and Bubba Wallace, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Carson Hocevar, and Chris Buescher rounded out the top ten.

Report

Background

Darlington Raceway is a race track built for NASCAR racing located near Darlington, South Carolina. It is nicknamed "The Lady in Black" and "The Track Too Tough to Tame" by many NASCAR fans and drivers and advertised as "A NASCAR Tradition." It is of a unique, somewhat egg-shaped design, an oval with the ends of very different configurations, a condition which supposedly arose from the proximity of one end of the track to a minnow pond the owner refused to relocate. This situation makes it very challenging for the crews to set up their cars' handling in a way that is effective at both ends.

Entry list

' denotes rookie driver.
' denotes playoff driver.
denotes driver who is ineligible for series driver points.
Practice

was the fastest in the practice session with a time of 29.007 seconds and a speed of.

Practice results

Qualifying

scored the pole for the race with a time of 28.694 and a speed of.

Qualifying results

Race

Race results

Stage results

Stage One
Laps: 115
Stage Two
Laps: 115

Final Stage results

Stage Three
Laps: 137

Race statistics

Lead changes: 24 among 10 different drivers
Cautions/Laps: 7 for 37 laps
Red flags: 0
Time of race: 3 hours, 51 minutes and 7 seconds
Average speed:
Media

Television

covered the race on the television side. Leigh Diffey, two–time Darlington winner Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte called the race from the broadcast booth. Dave Burns, Kim Coon, Parker Kligerman and Marty Snider handled the pit road duties from pit lane.

Radio

had the radio call for the race, which was also simulcast on Sirius XM NASCAR Radio.

Standings after the race

;Drivers' Championship standings
;Manufacturers' Championship standings

Pos	Manufacturer	Points
1	Chevrolet	992
2	Toyota	960
3	Ford	899

Note: Only the first 16 positions are included for the driver standings.