Darlington, The Lady In Black, Too Tough To Tame...all the same track. This is known to be one of the tougher tracks on the schedule to get wins at let alone to run a consistent race at with the way the track is shaped, banked, and how well the surface wears tires out and that’s complicated by the fact that the track is different almost every time they race at it due to weather and the packages on the car and the lengths they’ve run for the races.

While the Truck race had a huge amount of wrecks and a Talladega like “big one” keep in mind that the Trucks running Darlington is relatively new and a lot of the drivers in the Truck series hadn’t practiced or run there before which isn’t the case for the Cup drivers, as even the rookies this year have run it at the Xfinity level last year and the year before. So expect this race to have fewer, smaller, incident cautions even without the practice this year as they did run it three times last year, though not with this package. The 750-horsepower package is new to Darlington and the low downforce on the cars will make them handle differently than they have before which will be a new challenge for the drivers and teams alike.

Looking at the charts below we can see what kind of strategy tends to work here as it’s more of a balance through the field week than straight dominators and straight PD like we’ve seen other weeks. Keep in mind that a few of these numbers are a bit thrown off by the Wednesday race here last year in which the finishing positions from the Sunday race were inverted and thus the back half of the field were the faster cars and made it back up front. If you want more strategy info check out the Track Breakdown and the Podcast from this week as well.

Average Points By Starting Spot

These charts show the points over the last five races by starting spot regardless of the driver in that starting spot. Keep in mind they will be thrown off by the Wednesday race here a year ago. They are meant to illustrate strategy and not hard and fast plays to live by.

Stacks

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