Get ready for a wild night under the lights
The Lady in Black gets a facelift ... sort of
Looking back into the record book to when Darlington Raceway opened in 1950, the pole speed was 82 mph. Except for the track being flip-flopped a number of years ago, very little has changed at Darlington.
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Race Trax:
News:
- Newman to leave Penske after '08
- Yeley experiences prerace troubles
- Rowdy wins N'wide race
- Smoke to be driver/owner in '09
- Elledge joins Red Bull
Video:
Analysis:
- Hammond: What's wrong at Penske?
- Owens: Busch nears NASCAR royalty
- Scorecard: The people's champ
- Spencer: Busch's win a team effort
Photo galleries:
Blog:
Fantasy:
Can you dig it?
The company that repaved the track after last year's Cup weekend took thousands of laser measurements so as not to disturb the nuances. That's good because this place is so unique from anywhere else we go to. Drivers have a love/hate relationship with Darlington.
It is a very difficult racetrack, and few young drivers come in and master it right out of the box. It's just a very challenging race track because of its shape and it was built for speeds at a much slower pace. Having said that, all the drivers will tell you that aside from the Daytona 500 or maybe winning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, coming home with the trophy from Darlington is quite an accomplishment. It means you beat one of the toughest racetracks out there. To me, Darlington is the ultimate test of finesse and aggression at the same time.
Lee Spencer: With the repaving at Darlington Speedway, the 1.366-miler has more than lived up to the moniker "too tough to tame" over the past two days. Six teams have switched to backup cars, including that of defending series champion Jimmie Johnson, who has two wins and has only finished outside of the top 10 once in nine career starts at the track.
Still, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Director John Darby is comfortable with what he's seen the first two days. He described the new racing surface as "Darlington in two-times fast forward."
"It's a typical Darlington that still lives up to her name, her heritage and her historical background," Darby said. "There's a lot of stripes on the side of cars. That's how you can walk around and tell who's fast and who's not."
How will Busch react?
I think one storyline to follow will be how Kyle Busch responds to criticism he has received following his late crash with Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Richmond International Raceway last weekend. I personally don't think its going to affect Busch at all. I don't think he cares whether anyone likes him or not. He is there to win races, not a popularity contest. He is not one to hide from the media, but he is one to make himself scarce. I am curious to see how he reacts to the media in the garage area. I am not worried about it affecting his on-track performance.
Jeff Owens: NASCAR desperately needs a bad guy. Someone to spice things up, someone to counter the good-guy vanilla personalities that permeate the sport. Someone not afraid to be unpopular and take a hit. Someone who will wreck the sport's biggest stars and not care. Someone who will get booed unmercifully and shrug.
Someone fans love to hate.
After a long wait, Busch has emerged as the newest star capable of filling the role of villain.
Busch will accept it and take it in stride. He's perfectly willing to play the role of bad guy, as long as he gets the results in the end. Like Dale Earnhardt and others, winning is all that matters to him.
As a great driver once said, as long as he gets some kind of reaction, as long as the fans are making noise ...
Pre-race favorite?
I think if you were to take a poll in the garage area, everyone will point to Carl Edwards to keep an eye on this weekend. Carl already has three wins this year, but he has had some bad luck too. Carl is the guy to beat when it comes to speed. Darlington is the ultimate challenge for Carl; and trust me, Carl likes challenges. Having his crew chief Bob Osborne back on top of the pit box is a real positive for Carl and I think he will be a storyline to follow this weekend.
Mike Harmon: Jeff Gordon ended a three-race mini-drought with a fabulous run-up of 19 slots to capture ninth place at Richmond last weekend. He's been one of the top performers at Darlington historically, posting a mind-boggling 15 top-five finishes in his 27 career starts at the track. He starts strong, having claimed four poles here. He's also raced into Victory Lane seven times. How about this stat? Gordon has raced inside the top 15 in 98.8 percent of the laps run in the past three Darlington events. I have a gut feeling the No. 24 team is about to go on a tear, and I'm jumping on the bandwagon for a monster run this weekend.
Oh, what a night race
Racing under the lights at Darlington is quite a sight. I was there in 1985 when Bill Elliott won the Winston Million. It was an incredibly hot day there during Labor Day weekend. Darlington, like any race, takes on a different aura when it is raced under the lights. The drivers love racing at night too. I compare this to when they put lights up at Wrigley Field. The purists said "maybe we shouldn't do that." But Darlington has lights now and it's an incredible race.
Darlington should absolutely have two races a year. To me, that race, the Southern 500 has so much history and it means so much to the drivers who win it. Over Labor Day weekend, Darlington was a survival race. It's always hot, humid and the track is slick. If you win at Darlington, it is special. To me, the Southern 500 needs to come back on the schedule and be at Darlington. I think it would be a very popular move if that race came back.
Strategy at Darlington is going to be a lot different than ever before. In the past when the caution came out, you dove to pit road and took four brand new Goodyear tires. But now, this new surface changes the equation. It's a bit of the unknown and we might see some guys gamble. We might see some teams take two tires instead of four to gain track position. Darlington has always been a tough place to pass so if you can gain positions on pit road through strategy then you will be ahead of the game.
Kurt Busch: Darlington will have a ton of grip, but the rock-hard tires will probably see us slipping and sliding all over the place this Saturday. If the cars are all bunched up for the finish, you'll likely see some of the brave and daring young souls out there pushing it to the limit and doing whatever it takes to win. The key to it all, however, would probably be a late caution with less than 10 laps remaining. We'd start single file with the leaders up front and all the lapped cars completely out of the way and running behind them.
Darlington is such a tight and narrow track all the way around, and when you look back at the video from the shootout that Ricky and I had in 2003, you'd have to label it a miracle that we didn't crash each other out that day. As big and bulky as these new cars are, you could still wedge two guys running side-by-side on that narrow little strip of asphalt. It would be another mind-blowing finish, that's for sure.
Time to look at the points
There are teams that need to have a big points night on Saturday. Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth — guys like that need to start making up some ground. This season is clipping along at a pretty good pace right now and guys we are used to seeing in the top 10 or 12 need to have a good night. I think the pressure is mounting on teams like that. We expect guys like I just mentioned, who are former champions, to be up there in the top 12. Now they are facing the task of racing hard just to get into the Chase for the Sprint Cup at the end of the year.
Larry McReynolds: When you look at the continued struggles at three champions — Kurt Busch, Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth — you would have to wonder how they will do this weekend. They have all run really well at Darlington in the past, but the past is the past, and I am just not sure how they will do. If I was doing my fantasy racing league this week, those would probably be three guys I would stay away from. I don't know that anyone could have anticipated it being this way.
Who's free?
One thing I think will continue to be interesting on a weekly basis is the guys we call "free agents." Dale Earnhardt Incorporated came out and said they picked up the option on Martin Truex Jr.'s contract, but Martin then came out and says there are still things they need to talk about.
While one of the biggest free agents went off the market when Carl Edwards announced he had re-signed with Roush Fenway Racing last week there are still several drivers with uncertain futures. Other big names out there include Ryan Newman, Greg Biffle and Bobby Labonte. There are also some rumblings from some other drivers who are with teams that aren't happy. So I think that will continue to be a story week to week.
Larry McReynolds: There are still a lot of pieces remaining in the free-agent puzzle, and I think the piece of the puzzle that really and truly has to fall in place in order for the rest to start finding their own spot is Tony Stewart. I don't know that we will get that answer anytime soon — we may get it sooner than we think — but as I think Tony has said a few times now, if he indeed does leave Joe Gibbs Racing, he wants to be fair to that organization and give them the opportunity to latch onto somebody that they feel really good about.
There are still three or four awesome drivers that don't have a deal in place for next season and beyond and I think they will wait out for a while so that they can see what becomes available, what Stewart decides to do, and in some cases, see how the performance of their existing team goes.
Another variable to consider is that fourth Richard Childress Racing team, which is probably not just going to dive in and hire a driver nonchalantly. I know there were reports at Richmond that Bobby Labonte had re-signed with Petty Enterprises, but I know for a fact that Jeff Hammond went and spoke to Labonte just a few hours before Saturday's race and Labonte said, "The best thing I can tell you is that unless it comes from my mouth, it's probably not 100 percent true yet."
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