Just seven races into the 2025 season, the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series get matched up with the fiercest dancer in the Carolinas: Darlington Raceway, the Lady in Black.
Don’t be fooled by her novel egg shape; she can bite you and take your race away in an instant.
A bit shorter than her longer dance lesson towards the end of summer, these 400 miles will be nothing but pure agony for the Goodyear tires fitted on the cars.
Poor attempts at cutting a rug could lead to cutting a tire or scraping the wall, two things that could threaten a strong performance.
At the Track Too Tough To Tame, only one driver will prevail.
Will it be one of our five winners from the first seven races, or will a new driver punch their Playoff ticket this weekend with a breathtaking foxtrot around the racing world’s most-famous minnow pond?
Find out today at Darlington Raceway.
Last Week at Martinsville…
Though I often do my best to give a mildly substantive recap of the previous week’s race, there really wasn’t much to say about the drubbing Denny Hamlin put on the field in Martinsville.
Rising from the fifth starting spot, Hamlin first took the lead from Chase Elliott on lap 126 and held onto it through the end of stage 2 and nearly all the way through the final stage.
One brief challenge from teammate Christopher Bell evaporated as Hamlin’s Progressive Toyota sped into the familiar Virginia sunset as a winner again in Martinsville, notching the 55th win of his career and his sixth at the Paperclip.
Hamlin’s 274 laps led finally put an end to a significant drought that the veteran racer had at the track, dating back to the 2015 spring race. The win also tied him with NASCAR legend Rusty Wallace on the all-time Cup Series wins list.
For a more detailed recap of the Cook Out 400, my esteemed colleague Audrey Jeffress wrote a stellar summary of last week’s events to help you get up to speed for this weekend.
This Week in NASCAR
In light of the finish to last week’s Xfinity Series race at Martinsville, NASCAR handed down a hefty 50-point penalty to JR Motorsports’ Sammy Smith after he made intentional contact with Taylor Gray on the final lap.
Of all the surprising April Fools’ Day news, the most shocking came from Legacy Motor Club as they announced that their organization filed a lawsuit against Rick Ware Racing for a breach of contract in a pending charter transfer.
Legacy Motor Club maintain that Ware signed, initialed, and dated the entire agreement in early March that was due to take effect as soon as next season, 2026. Ware’s representatives said he was under the impression that the transfer would take place prior to the 2027 season.
Jey and I dropped our latest edition of our power rankings where we rank the top-10 drivers in the Cup Series.
In the NASCAR Xfinity Series, a winless drought came to an end as Brandon Jones capitalized on a fast pit stop, fresh tires, and a late restart jumbled up by varying strategies to pull away late in the going and ultimately claim his first victory in nearly three calendar years.
The 28-year-old from Georgia made his return to Joe Gibbs Racing this season after a two-year stint with JRM that saw the Xfinity mainstay struggle to keep up with his championship-caliber teammates.
NASCAR’s Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series will be joining the Cup Series next weekend in Bristol.
If you’re looking for a link to the starting lineup, look no further.
The Race
Today’s Goodyear 400 will be broadcast on Fox Sports 1 at 3pm Eastern time with Mike Joy, Clint Bowyer, and Kevin Harvick on the call.
The 400 stands for the amount of miles to be run in today’s race, and given Darlington’s 1.366-mile layout, that means today’s race will run for 293 laps with stages ending on the following laps: 90-185-293.
In the last 10 Darlington races I used for this sample (all spring races since 2020 and the summer races before that), the average Goodyear 400 looks something like this: 9 cautions for 44 caution laps, 17 lead changes, 2,229 green-flag passes (or 9 per lap), and an average duration of 3 hours and 19 minutes.
The final caution lap tends to fall around 47 laps to go (or lap 247) because this race has only gone into Overtime once in the last decade, the 2023 iteration of this event.
Writer’s Pick
Last week, I selected Bubba Wallace to come home with the famed grandfather clock, but it was ultimately his car owner that brought home the hardware.
Speaking of his car owner, that’s this week’s pick to take home the checkered flag, Denny Hamlin.
Hamlin’s relationship goes way back to the very beginning of his NASCAR career when the Gibbs family took him out to Darlington to test for the first time. For more on this story, read Kelly Crandall’s article from Racer.mag.
While the 44-year-old has won the Southern 500 three times (most of active drivers), he’s only claimed one springtime victory: the rain-shortened 2020 Toyota 500(k).
Wanting to establish himself and new crew chief Chris Gayle as title contenders early, I expect Denny to wheel his Carl Edwards throwback to victory lane today.
(Top Photo Credit: Jasen Vinlove/USA TODAY Sports)
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