Man, talk about reminding everyone why you can’t be trusted.

The Track Too Tough To Tame.

Pick your poison. Whichever Darlington nickname you favor, it fit the tossing-and-turning nature of Sunday night’s Cup Series playoff opener. 

In the end, NASCAR’s revered No. 43 visited Victory Lane for the 200th time in its history.

What? We’ll get to that.

Erik Jones displayed the form that once had him fast-tracked for potential championships.

Denny Hamlin played hard but nice at the end.

And, not to get all technical on you, but crappy-ass parts played a role. A scary one, at that.

Green, green, green . . . Let’s go!

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Of Richard Petty’s 200 career wins, two bits of trivia:

Surprisingly, only one came at Darlington’s Southern 500 (he won the track’s spring race twice). 

And eight of his wins came in either the family’s No. 41 or No. 42 car. 

And that’s why you might’ve cocked your head upon hearing Sunday night’s win was the 200th for the 43.

And frankly, you might’ve cocked your head in the closing laps, wondering how on Earth, with all the tall timber in playoff mode, it was Erik Jones leading the way. His last win was three years earlier, back when he was in upper-tier equipment at Joe Gibbs Racing. 

Well, two more things to toss at you.

First, Jones’ most recent win, three years ago, was the very same Southern 500 at the very same Darlington, suggesting the ol’ gal doesn’t scare him none.

Second, he and the Petty team have shown a noticeable improvement this year, even though they were comfortably below the playoff cutline on points.

Through the 26-race regular season last year, there were just three top 10s. This year, through 26 races, nine top-10s and a pair of top-5s, and then Sunday’s victory.

“We've been so close all year, and I didn't think today was going to be the day,” Jones said afterward. “It was going to be a tough one to win, but no better fitting place. I love this track; I love this race.”

Not everyone’s mood matched Erik’s, as you might suspect.

Chase Elliott spun all the way from first to ninth place in the updated playoff standings.

Kevin Harvick fell all the way to 16th but that seems trivial considering he had to escape a budding inferno. More on this later.

Kyle Busch was leading and looked to be fully snapped back into form before something under his hood snapped back at him. Blown engines have been part of racing since Barney Oldfield was mashing the gas, but Kyle's motor puked UNDER CAUTION!

In a mild upset that baffled America's armchair psychotherapists, Kyle himself didn’t snap.

“Just unfortunate circumstances for us tonight,” he said before leaving us with a weather forecast: “The sun will come up tomorrow.”

And poor Martin Truex Jr., who must’ve done something to anger the racing gods, because they just refuse to take their boots off his neck. He wants them to know he ain’t thrilled with their continued punishment.

He was fifth in Stage 1, second in Stage 2, and leading (he led 48 laps in all) when his Toyota’s innards went haywire — “water pump” was the officially listed reason for exit.

“Just mad. Upset. Angry,” Truex said as he worked through his Thesaurus. “We deserve better and no matter what we do this year it seems wrong. When we run good, stuff goes wrong and when we run bad, nothing happens . . . . So, pretty pissed off.”

Two weeks after Kyle Larson bum-rushed Chase Elliott at Watkins Glen, and one week after Austin Dillon shoved Austin Cindric out of the lead at Daytona, and in a season where such actions have become expected, Denny Hamlin played nice Sunday night.

Tough, in a calculating way, but nice in the end.

Running second to Jones in the closing laps, Hamlin pressured the leader as much as he could, hoping to get Jones to overdrive his Chevy and slip just enough to give up the goods.

High-speed head games, Hamlin told Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass after climbing from his car. Tried to make Jones think he was taking it into the corner deeper than he was, and therefore trying to force a mistake.

Nope, Jones didn’t bite, and Hamlin had just one other arrow in the quiver — the bump-and-run. He might’ve considered it, he said, except . . .

“Erik’s never done anything sideways to me.”

Hey, whaddaya know, sometimes nice guys finish first.

And just like that, the top four in playoff points are Joey Logano, William Byron, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell. 

A quick nod to Byron, who finished eighth. Shockingly, Billy The Kid hadn’t had a top 10 in three months before Sunday. It's not like he's driving an ox cart, by the way.

The new bottom four: Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Chase Briscoe, and the aforementioned Mr. Harvick, who reminded us that these guys are wired differently.

“The car started burning and as it burned, the flames started coming through the dash,” he began. “I ran a couple laps and then as the flames got bigger it started burning stuff up . . . the fire was coming through the dash.”

As for the ultimate culprit, Harvick wasn’t very subtle in taking the latest swing at a key piece of the Next Gen car era: Universal equipment, made by a third party instead of the individual teams.

“What a disaster for no reason,” he said. “We didn’t touch the wall. We didn’t touch a car, and here we are in the pits with a burned up car and we can’t finish the race during the playoffs because of crappy-ass parts.”

(Yes, grammarians will point out the importance of that hyphen.)

Alrighty then, only thing left to do now is gather all those parts and pieces and point the caravan westward for next week’s gathering at Kansas Speedway.

After a night where a longshot won, a few favorites busted and one rolled craps, it’s either fitting or scary to know Kansas Speedway has a casino outside Turn 2.