

The “Track Too Tough to Tame”… “The Lady in Black”… Call it what you want, but everyone knows that Darlington is one of the toughest tracks for the Cup Series drivers. The egg-shaped 1.366-mile track has a lot of banking and the racing groove moves around throughout the race. Drivers have to “race the track”, instead of worrying about their competitors. It is one of the iconic tracks on the schedule and typically puts on a great show. The GoodYear 400 can be seen Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET on FS1.
The NASCAR Cup Series competed at Darlington three times last year. That is a lot of data to use for the race this week, but the data may not be accurate.
NASCAR used the 550 HP aero package in the three races at Darlington last year. The Cup Series will use the 750 HP aero package with the tapered spacer this week. That is the same package they used at the short tracks this year and similar to what they used at Darling prior to the 2018 season.
I used stats from the races at Darlington in the 750 HP aero package, some of the data from the three races last year, the drivers performances in the 750 HP aero packages this year and the Driver Rating from the last four races (not including Talladega) to figure out the rankings for the race Sunday.
Here are the Driver Rankings for the GoodYear 400…
1. Denny Hamlin |
2. Martin Truex Jr. |
3. Kevin Harvick |
4. Kyle Larson |
5. Kyle Busch |
6. Brad Keselowski |
7. William Byron |
8. Joey Logano |
9. Chase Elliott |
10. Austin Dillon |
11. Alex Bowman |
12. Ryan Blaney |
13. Kurt Busch |
14. Matt DiBenedetto |
15. Tyler Reddick |
16. Erik Jones |
17. Chris Buescher |
18. Christopher Bell |
19. Ross Chastain |
20. Daniel Suarez |
21. Ryan Newman |
22. Aric Almirola |
23. Cole Custer |
24. Michael McDowell |
25. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. |
26. Bubba Wallace |
27. Chase Briscoe |
28. Ryan Preece |
29. Anthony Alfredo |
30. Corey LaJoie |
31. Justin Haley |
32. J.J. Yeley |
33. B.J. McLeod |
34. Quin Houff |
35. James Davison |
36. Cody Ware |
37. Josh Bilicki |
* Photos from NASCAR Media
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