What to watch for in today’s NASCAR Cup race at Darlington Raceway

DARLINGTON, S.C. — When the checkered flag flies to end today’s Cup race at Darlington Raceway, 30% of the regular season will have been completed.

Could today be a day that helps turn around a season for a driver or continue their woes? On a throwback weekend, will it be a throwback scheme in Victory Lane or a car without such a scheme?

Here’s a look at what to watch for in today’s race.

Drivers to watch

Favorites: William Byron and Denny Hamlin. Byron starts on the pole and has the best average running position in the Next Gen car at Darlington (6.32). Hamlin, coming off his Martinsville win, starts third and was one of only two drivers to finish in the top 10 in both Darlington races last year.

Keep an eye on: Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney. Larson has a new pit crew this weekend, featuring changes with both tire changers, the tire carrier and jackman. Blaney doesn’t have a good record at Darlington but showed long-run speed in practice.

Don’t overlook: Ryan Preece and Chase Briscoe. The former Stewart-Haas Racing teammates both start at the front. Preece qualified second; Briscoe fourth. Preece, who has finished in the top 10 in the last three races, ranked second in average speed over 20, 25 and 30 consecutive laps in Saturday’s practice. Briscoe won last year’s Southern 500 and was the only driver to finish in the top five in both Darlington races last year. Briscoe enters this weekend having scored back-to-back top 10s in his new Joe Gibbs Racing ride.

In need of a good run/win

Brad Keselowski, who won this race a year ago, enters today’s event 30th in the points. His average finish of 25.1 is the lowest of his Cup career through the first seven races of a season.

“I feel like we’re going to do all the right things and get where we need to be,” said Keselowski, who starts 20th. “We just haven’t gotten the results.

“We haven’t qualified as well as we’d like to, but neither has particularly the 60 car (of teammate Ryan Preece). In the race, we haven’t been able to put it together – some of it in our control, a lot of it not in our control, so it’s been frustrating, but I kind of have this feeling that we’re getting a lot of the bad luck out of the way very early in the season. That’s kind of the overwhelming sentiment and that if we stay the course, it will come back to us.”

He’s not the only one in need of a good run today.

Austin Cindric is 24th in the points. He has finished 19th or worse in five of the first seven races. He starts sixth.

Ryan Blaney has not had a top 10 in the last five races, a stretch that included three DNFs. He starts ninth.

Darlington’s challenge

Tire wear is extreme, the temperature will be in the mid-80s, and the focus will be intense for drivers today.

So who will make mistakes and how much will it cost them?

“I think Darlington is by far one of the most grueling race tracks that you go to simply because it’s going to be a warm one this weekend,” said Denny Hamlin, a four-time Darlington winner, who starts third. “It’s going to be mentally taxing knowing that you have to hit your marks just perfect at this track and then, just knowing the mental side of it, you have 35 other guys out there that don’t want to let you win.

“It’s really hard to navigate that, and it’s a track that you can’t get away from others. Usually other mile-and-a-half tracks, tracks of this size, it’s wide enough to where you want to go get clean air, you can probably go get it. Here, there’s just no escaping it. It’s really hard to get runs, make passes on people. It just takes its toll, or it has for me, on my body, mind every time I race here.

Watch pit entrance

Darlington has among the most difficult pit entries at any track. It’s not uncommon to see a driver spin trying to get on to pit road or miss the entrance.

Let Austin Cindric explain: “When you go to pit road, you have no idea where pit road is, what the race track is, where you can run. All of it just a massive paved area. Your visuals, you can’t see it, so you pick up different reference points. You can cut a lot of distance. You can brake hard and make a sharp angle. It’s kind of whatever you can do consistently without really upsetting the car because by the time you do have to pit under green your tires are as bad as they’ll ever be and it’s really easy to make a mistake because of it.”

Throwback weekend

Nineteen of the 38 cars in today’s race have throwback schemes and it has led to a debate this weekend if the throwback weekend has lost its luster.

“I thought I lost it about four or five years ago, so I was way too early to that conversation, I think,” Chase Elliott said. “Not to be a downer — I joked about this years ago, but if we kept going down the road, we’re going to be throwing it back to me in 2018. At some point, I think we’ve got to chill on it a little bit. I think we’ve rode the horse to death, and we tend to do that a little bit too much.”

Ryan Blaney sees it another way.

“I love it,” he said. “I absolutely love it. I love to see what people come up with every year. There’s so many neat schemes from drivers or teams that have inspired a lot of people to be in the garage today that get to throw it back.

“I love just walking through the garage. I really wish we wouldn’t announce (the schemes) on Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it. I wish you would just show up with it and then people in the garage see it for the first time because that would be a huge, neat reveal. … It still is very special and the teams love doing it, and I hope the fans still enjoy it.”