Coke Zero Sugar 400, Five Takeaways: Dillon wins, Truex loses, Tom Brady trumps NASCAR

Austin Dillon had it won under rain clouds, it seemed. Then it was taken away.

And in the end, he snatched it back, winning the Coke Zero Sugar 400 and earning a spot in the 2022 Cup Series playoffs.

Five takeaways from the 64th edition of Daytona International Speedway's summertime NASCAR race.

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1. Playoff field is set for NASCAR

Entering the weekend, 14 playoff spots were clinched, two were hanging out there.

Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr. were high enough in the standings to make the playoffs, assuming a new winner for 2022 didn't cross under the checkers.

But with Dillon getting his first win of the year and grabbing a playoff seat, it came down to Blaney and Truex racing for position and points.

Blaney entered with a 25-point lead over Truex, but lost it after finding an early accident. After the restart with 16 laps remaining, following a three-hour rain delay, Blaney regained it as Truex's damaged car couldn't keep its speed.

Blaney finished 15th, Truex eighth, but Blaney gained back enough points to take the one available playoff spot for a non-winner.

Why does it matter? Because both Blaney and Truex had run well enough this year, even without winning, to suggest they could be a playoff factor. Now, only Blaney will carry that torch, while Truex picks up the pieces.

"It's a shame. It stinks," he said afterward.

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2. Right call?

The way things turned out, you betcha. For NASCAR, it's often "damned if you do, damned if you don't." That came into play twice Sunday.

First, the original red flag and rain, which came shortly after the massive Big One in Turns 1 and 2. Rain clouds surrounded the track and replays showed rain hitting windshields just before the first slip that triggered the big pileup.

"They should've known it was about to let loose," you can hear some say (and probably did).

Well, about 200 yards away, the NASCAR pace car was sitting just off the track and was dry as a bone. There was no sign of rain until there was. And you know what happens if they red-flag things while "assuming" rain is coming? No rain, of course.

Secondly, should they have just called the race shortly after the red flag when the radar looked horrible? At other times during the season, maybe they would. But there was a lot on the line Sunday, so they waited, and they were paid off with an actual green-flag finish.

Only the Truex team wishes they'd pulled the plug early.

3. Mother Nature and Lady Luck are quite a Daytona combo

Lots of potential playoff scenarios were in play before the start of the final race of the regular season. Lots and lots.

And it didn't clear up at all once things got rolling. Blaney's early crash put him in a very tenuous position but improved the chances of Truex, but then Truex was caught up in a wreck and suddenly math was in play.

That's when the weather gods and the invisible hands of fate took hold.

First, Dillon somehow got through that massive crash in Turns 1 and 2. Go ahead, watch the replay, then watch it again. And again.

You see Dillon basically dipping to the apron on the bottom of the track, then stepping through it all as chaos reigns all around him — like Col. Kilgore in "Apocalypse Now."

That type of avoidance and escape can't be scripted or game-planned.

Neither can the weather, of course, and that was Dillon's next good hand dealt his way.

But Dillon's apparent good break took a bad turn. If this hadn't been the final race of the regular season, with so much on the line, would NASCAR have waited as long as they did to restart, particularly after already starting a day late?

Everybody talks about the weather, they say, while no one does anything about it. Well, NASCAR couldn't do anything about it, but they sure outlasted it.

For Dillon, in the end, it didn't matter.

4. Tom Brady's pull remains strong

It was an odd TV weekend for NASCAR, even in the organization's hometown coverage area.

Sometimes you learn a hard lesson about your own relevance. This past weekend, NASCAR learned that, while big, it's not quite "Tom Brady big."

It's not unusual, this time of year, for certain network affiliates to redirect network coverage and instead broadcast a preseason NFL game, particularly if the game involves a team of high local interest.

Heading into Saturday night, when the Coke Zero 400 was scheduled to run, Daytona Beach's local NBC affiliate (WESH, which officially lists its market as Orlando/Daytona Beach) decided to broadcast the Tampa Bay Bucs-Indianapolis Colts preseason game — after all, Tom Brady was making his lone preseason appearance for the Bucs.

Tough pill for NASCAR and the Speedway to swallow on its home turf, but in the end it didn't matter since the race never got started and was eventually pushed to CNBC — NBC's financial channel — for Sunday's broadcast.

As those folks at CNBC might tell us, Tom Brady remains a strong "Buy" on the stock scale.

5. Darlington starts NASCAR Playoffs

The first round of the 10-race playoffs begins next Sunday at historic Darlington Raceway with the Southern 500, NASCAR's original "big speedway" race, dating back to 1950.

Joey Logano won there in the spring and led the most laps, but other playoff drivers led chunks of laps there, including Denny Hamlin, Ross Chastain, William Byron and Kyle Larson. Tyler Reddick led 10 laps and ran second to Logano at the stripe.

After that it's Kansas, where Kurt Busch won in the spring. And then what figures to be a hairy night at the Bristol bullring, where Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott combined to lead most of the 500 laps last year.

Larson won when Elliott and Kevin Harvick traded paint and began an on-track feud that carried on through most of the playoffs.

Kyle Busch won Bristol this past spring but that was on the dirt, so no conclusions to draw for the fall night race.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR Coke Zero Sugar 400: Five instant takeaways at Daytona