The culmination of 25 exhilarating races packed tight with drama, intrigue, and plenty of action on and off the race track arrives tonight as the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series roll into the famed Darlington Raceway.
A slew of 20 teams — over half of the Cup grid — get one final shot to seal themselves into the Playoffs and the history books if they’re able to reach victory lane in tonight’s Southern 500.
Before we get to that, let’s see what happened in Daytona.
Last Week at Daytona…
A full field of 40 race cars occupied the World Center of Racing for the Coke Zero Sugar 400. Leading the field to green were Front Row teammates Michael McDowell and Todd Gilliland, making team history by locking out the front row for the first time.
Stage 1 went by without a hitch as NASCAR elected to shorten the opening segment to not include a fuel run. This was done to avoid the riding around done earlier in the year in the Daytona 500 and at Talladega.
NASCAR’s gambit paid off as all 40 metal machines howled through the high banks of Daytona for 35 consecutive laps caution-free with winless Josh Berry notching his first stage victory.
During the stage break, Daniel Suárez’s team had some fuel leak out on their stop. Denny Hamlin pitted behind them and drove through Suárez’s stall and ignited the leftover fuel. The blaze spread quickly to the rear of his Coke Zero Sugar Chevy, but Suárez was none the wiser.
His team brought him down to pit road where he calmly sat in his car, expecting the flames to be extinguished. Once his team urged him to leave the car, the Mexican driver hopped out of his newly-charred Coke car.
The Trackhouse Racing team took the car to the garage to see if it was salvageable but ultimately withdrew from the event as the fire did far too much damage.
Lap 60 came and went without issue, but the very next lap, the sport’s most notorious driver sunk to a new low; Corey Lajoie beat Noah Gragson’s bumper off on the exit of turn 2. The second shove nudged the #10 car into Justin Haley’s #51, jostling an uneven Gragson back into Lajoie’s path.
The embattled Spire Motorsports driver proceeded to push through his drafting partner’s bumper, sending both cars into the outside wall and bringing much of the field with them.
Among those terminally damaged in the melee were: Ryan Preece, Denny Hamlin, and Chase Elliott. Elliott suffered the most as he came into the night second in regular season points, no doubt hoping to cash in on the 15 extra Playoff points awarded to the regular season champion.
Lajoie’s folly critically wounded Ross Chastain’s car, a fellow Chevy driver in desperate need of a good run as he entered the night one point above the Playoff cutline.
His adversary, Bubba Wallace, commanded the race when the wreck occurred and looked mighty comfortable in doing so. Bubba’s Columbia car was adorned in fish scales and led the school of drivers for much of stage 2 while duking it out with some determined Fords.
Just 15 laps into the next green-flag run, something strange happened.
Initially, it appeared Erik Jones simply lost a tire while running with the leaders on the backstretch, but as the picture widened, more details emerged. Toyota teammate Martin Truex Jr. lost a right-front tire as well, several seconds behind Jones in turn 2.
While the Toyota turmoil ensued, Shane van Gisbergen’s engine erupted in smoke. His #16 Safety Culture Camaro pulled behind the wall and into the garage where they determined a piece from Jones’ car may have chipped off and caused the unfortunate engine failure.
After a lengthy cleanup, the field ran eight more laps to conclude stage 2 where the field miraculously kept their cool and finished the segment clean with Penske stablemates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney finishing 1-2.
Remember how I said the first stage was shortened to prevent fuel savings racing? Well, it only stopped it at that point.
Much of the final stage was spent looking at the rear bumpers of Michael McDowell and Justin Haley. McDowell floated in and out of the top-5 all night but took center stage on the restart.
Just 20 laps later, Haley made a spirited effort to grab the lead in an attempt to make some of the faster cars burn fuel faster, thus giving the cars up front an inherent advantage heading into the closing laps.
This wouldn’t come to fruition as John Hunter Nemechek received a bad push from Kyle Larson, shooting the Legacy Motor Club racer into the freshly-paved backstretch infield and bringing out the race’s fifth caution.
Nemechek righted his #42 car before it sustained any damage, but all that track position he gained was lost due to someone else’s mistakes.
With most of the field on the lead lap, pit road became a busy place with RFK’s Brad Keselowski and his replacement in the #2 car, Austin Cindric, taking the front row for a pivotal late-race restart.
According to NBC’s scoring pylon, Keselowski was credited as the leader, so when he went first on the restart, I didn’t bat an eye. As it turns out, Cindric should’ve had control, and despite a passionate plea from Keselowski, the #6 team received and served a pass-through penalty for jumping early on the restart.
The controversy handed the lead of the race to Cindric, the 2022 winner of the Daytona 500 seeking his second victory of the year at the expense of another Ford driver’s mistakes.
Just as he settled at the head of the pack, McDowell surged ahead and cleared, swimming to the front in his Long John Silvers scheme. Kyle Larson’s battered #5 Chevy nearly put Cindric into the fence coming out of turn 4, causing congestion in the top lane that turned into obscene levels of momentum.
Cindric was the beneficiary of a massive aerodynamic push, one that was too strong for him and McDowell to contain. Even as Cindric jumped off the gas to prevent an incident, The Big One was inevitable.
McDowell’s night ended with his car flailing to the left before flopping onto the hood of Logano’s car, riding on his side for a short distance in the air until clipping Alex Bowman’s rear decklid.
The #34 car landed back on all fours, but its strong showing was over without a trophy.
Several strong cars dropped out of the race following the crash, including Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Justin Haley, Logano, Blaney, and regular season points leader Tyler Reddick.
Resuming with three laps to go, The Big One was far from done. Josh Berry and Austin Cindric dueled for the first lap, each Ford shifting ahead of the other as the air propelled their cars forward.
That is until Kyle Busch gave Cindric a bad push on the bottom line on the exit of turn 2, popping the #2 car into the advancing Berry’s left side and spinning both cars.
Cindric’s car remained on the ground while Berry’s #4 eero Mustang caught major air, blowing over in a style reminiscent of Lajoie the week before in Michigan. Instead of catching the grass, Berry’s Ford sailed into the inside wall nose first, rendering the car destroyed while keeping the driver perfectly safe inside.
Josh Berry’s scary spill caused a collective silence on the broadcast and in the stands until he climbed from the mangled heap under his own power with his thumbs up.
A Ford fiasco naturally dragged two Chevys to the scrapyard as well, junking William Byron and Austin Hill. That seventh and final caution would set up the first attempt at NASCAR Overtime.
Lining up on the front row for the final restart were Kyle Busch and Harrison Burton, two drivers that couldn’t possibly be any different.
Busch came into the season with a 19-year streak of winning at least one race per season. This was another unique accomplishment in a career packed to the brim with them, but it is the all-time NASCAR record that he swiped away from Richard Petty early last season.
Kyle wanted to keep the streak alive and snatch a Playoff spot after a tremendous bout of bad luck in the summer stretch that saw him dip over 100 points below the cutline to make it into the postseason on points.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Harrison Burton is — in some eyes — a dead man walking, so to speak.
Entering his third season with Wood Brothers Racing, the 23-year-old second-generation racer struggled mightily in his first two seasons in NASCAR’s highest division, but this year was even worse.
Burton and the Woods sat 34th in points among 34 full-time drivers coming into the evening, and with the announcement that Josh Berry would driver the famed #21 next year in Burton’s stead, the young driver was suddenly fired and sprung into action by his incoming dismissal.
Searching for any signs of life in his once-burgeoning career, Burton would need the restart of a lifetime to make his dreams of becoming a NASCAR Cup Series winner come true.
And, that’s just what he did.
Radio miscommunication from Parker Retzlaff’s team led the young driver to lineup his Chevy behind Burton’s Ford, drawing the ire of the Bowtie Brigade.
Burton lagged back for much of the opening lap, allowing the energy to generate in the outside lane to make a final push on the race’s final circuit.
Meanwhile, Christopher Bell pushed his former teammate out to the lead where it looked like a certainty that Rowdy would get that elusive 64th win after a trying year.
Coming to the white flag, the outside lane got jumbled up when Busch threw the block on Burton, spurring Nemechek into action in the outside lane where nobody came to join him. Retzlaff’s Funkaway Chevy lurched ahead and kept pushing Burton.
NBC commentator Leigh Diffey waxed poetic about Busch out of turn 2 and down the backstretch, but the deft Aussie changed course as the Dex Imaging Dark Horse galloped by Busch’s Cheddar’s Chevy like it was standing still on the entry to turn 3.
Try as he might, the two-time champion lagged back to Bell for one last gasp. Rounding turn 4, Busch rose from the bottom line, first going high before swooping back underneath.
Burton fended the challenge well enough, took a bump from Busch, and crossed the finish line first at Daytona as Diffey exclaimed, “Jeff, your little boy has done it!”
A lame duck driver in the lamest and duckiest season in recent memory pushed all of his chips to the center of the table and came out looking like a golden goose.
Though it was the first win of Burton’s career, a more stunning achievement for his team quickly became more apparent with the Wood Brothers securing their 100th Cup Series victory with their 19th different driver.
It was a special night for the Burton family and the Wood Brothers, a bright, shining achievement in a NextGen era full of tumult and turmoil that’ll be wiped away with the team’s first Playoff berth in four seasons.
Unfortunately for Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain, Chris Buescher, and even Ty Gibbs and Martin Truex Jr., that makes Darlington a far more difficult race than it seemed just a few laps before when Austin Cindric appeared to be heading for his third career victory.
The News
NASCAR released the schedule, finally!
Tour dates for the Cup, Xfinity, and Truck series were announced by the sport on Thursday afternoon with major highlights like Cup and Xfinity heading down to Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City next June, Trucks and Xfinity tackling Rockingham (US), and the Truck Series travelling north to Lime Rock.
Some of Pit Box Press’ writing staff participated in a roundtable discussion centering around the now-officially issued schedule earlier this week.
For Mexico, this will be American stock car racing’s first trip to the fabled facility since the late-2000s when the Xfinity Series ran four races around the track’s Grand Prix circuit normally saved for Formula 1.
Rockingham’s renovation project put the 1-mile circuit back on NASCAR’s radar, bringing the two lower-tier series to one of NASCAR’s most treacherous tracks in the middle of April.
As for Lime Rock, the Truck Series initially sought a date at the 1.53-mile road course all the way back in 1995 when the series made its debut, and 30 years later, the two entities came together and got a deal done. The track will host a regular-season event on June 28, 2025.
If you’re keen on scouring the schedules on your own, here is the link for both the Xfinity and Truck series.
Darlington’s History & Track Overview
Debuting in 1950, Darlington Raceway became NASCAR’s first superspeedway.
When track owner Harold Brasington constructed the facility, the banking of the track wasn’t meant to be a racing surface at all; it was intended to keep cars on the track and out of spectator areas beyond the turns.
Johnny Mantz piloted a Hubert Westmoreland-owned Plymouth to an inaugural Southern 500 victory while David Pearson’s 10 Darlington triumphs slot the “Silver Fox” at the top of the record book.
Darlington Raceway’s construction has been rehashed a number of times: a minnow pond behind the backstretch gave The Lady in Black her that unique egg shape with two variably banked corners.
Until 1997, the modern-day front straight was the backstretch, making the steep and sweeping corner the new turns 1 & 2 and reclassifying the sharper, flatter corner as turns 3 & 4.
Sitting at a towering 25°, turn 1’s narrow entry opens up into a broad turn where drivers hang onto the wheel like their lives depend on it, riding as close to the wall as possible before diving down towards the apron to exit the equally narrow turn 2.
Drivers then rip down the back straightaway until swinging into the problematic turn 3 where Tyler Reddick and Chris Buescher made critical contact in the closing stages during the spring event.
Tighter than the other end of the circuit, the 23° turns 3 & 4 require throttle discipline from racers drivers before sliding back onto the frontstretch to complete the lap.
The track is considered an intermediate, measuring in at 1.366 miles. Notorious for its tire wear and close-quarters racing, seasoned “dancers” know how to keep up with the Lady in Black the best while she feasts on the young and arrogant.
Weather & Fast Facts
While there were vague threats of weather for the Daytona race weekend, Mother Nature gave stock car racing a break, allowing the race to progress to the end without interruption.
That trend should continue this weekend as AccuWeather projects a hot, sunny Sunday evening in the high-80s around the drop of the green flag that will slowly descend into the 70s when the Moon replaces the Sun.
As for the average Southern 500, it looks something like this: 9 cautions for 49 caution laps, 17 lead changes, 2,592 green-flag passes (an average of 8.2 per lap), and the final caution drops close to 40 laps to go.
The Southern 500 experienced just one Overtime finish in the last 10 years when Kevin Harvick took the victory in 2014, so don’t expect the race to log extra laps past the scheduled distance.
Sunday’s race will be 367 laps long over 500 miles, which on average takes the drivers four hours to complete. Since the event kicks off at 6pm Eastern on USA Network, get comfy for one of the sport’s longest nights.
The Odds
Deviating from my normal protocols (for the second week in a row), I’ll be highlighting the best five drivers in the Cup Series field without a win and analyzing their stats to see if they can compete for one of NASCAR’s most sacred races.
First up is Kyle Busch (+1100). Richard Childress Racing’s struggles continued at the World Center of Racing with Busch leading at regulation at Daytona yet again, only to fall short of victory and a Playoff spot.
The 63-time race winner desperately wants his 19-year streak of winning at least one race per season to last, and he’s only got 11 more opportunities to make it happen. When Kyle Busch is determined, he’s a difficult driver to defeat, so good luck to the field these next two months, especially Sunday night.
Behind him on this list is Chris Buescher (+1400). The fifth-year RFK racer methodically made his way to the front in the spring, setting up a rough-and-tumble duel between him and Tyler Reddick.
The result? Two wrecked race cars and an angry Buescher that rushed Reddick post-race. That incident prevented Buescher from locking himself into the Playoffs, and he stands on the bubble now as the last driver in on points. Buescher knows how to rise to the occasion, and Sunday’s a perfect time to prove it.
Next up is Ross Chastain (+2000). The venerable watermelon farmer harvests great runs at the Track Too Tough To Tame, but at times, his aggressive driving style leads him to overstep and throw himself out of contention.
Sitting 27 points below the cutline for the Playoffs, the #1 car has spent so little time out front this season, leading just 175 circuits in 2024. Ross requires a lot of luck and misfortune from his competitors to point his way into the postseason, or he can rip his way to the front and put the Busch Light buggy on top once again.
One spot above Chastain in points is none other than Bubba Wallace (+2000). Bubba is no stranger to the cutline after advancing to the Playoffs by the skin of his teeth last season and doing the same in the first round.
In the 23XI driver’s last four starts in Darlington, Bubba flexed his muscle and displayed immense patience by saving his tires and rising to the top-10, registering finishes of ninth, fifth, and seventh, twice. When the pressure is on, Bubba performs, so if anyone jumps back into the Playoffs, it’ll be the #23.
Finally, we have Legacy Motor Club’s Erik Jones (+3000). Jones rewarded the King for signing him by bringing home the #43’s 200th victory back in 2022, a statement victory for a driver kicked to the curb by Joe Gibbs Racing.
Reunited with Toyota this season, Legacy hasn’t exactly shown a heap of improvement from last year’s disastrous campaign, but the Michigan native remains one of the best in the field when it comes to dancing with The Lady In Black. That Jones Boy might find his way to the front and a place for his team in the Playoffs.
Writer’s Pick
I doubled down on taking Bubba Wallace last weekend, and he gave me a lot of hope in stage 2. Unfortunately, the #23 and the #5 car can’t stay away from each other. Not to be deterred, Wallace wheeled his wounded Columbia Camry to a sixth-place result, five spots short of a victory.
Will I select him for the third straight week? No. I am instead going with his teammate, Tyler Reddick.
Reddick (+650) started this season off slow, but after his thrilling Talladega win, he’s taken it up a notch (perhaps even several notches.)
The #45 team’s worst finish came at Darlington in the spring where Reddick and Chris Buescher made contact in turn 4 with less than 10 laps to go, flattening tires on both cars and removing them from contention.
Lost in the finish was Reddick’s domination. The Californian led 174 of the event’s 293 laps and collected a stage 2 win, all washed away because he finished 32nd.
Reddick’s prowess at this track in the NextGen era is unmatched. Three podium finishes highlight the 28-year-old’s resume, and had he not gotten into accidents, he would likely have an even more sterling record.
This season has been dominated by Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson, but the best driver of 2024 has arguably been Reddick. With no Crown Jewels to his name, Reddick looks to tango with the Lady In Black better than anyone else on the grid.
(Top Photo Credit: Patrick Vallely/Pit Box Press)
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