The Cup Series will travel to Darlington Raceway to dance with “The Lady in Black” on Mother’s Day. This is one of my favorite races of the season. Not only does “The Track Too Tough to Tame” put on a great show, the cars will be using their throwback paint schemes. It is fun to see the teams honoring the iconic cars of the past. It should be fun to watch. I just wish it wasn’t at 3:30 p.m. ET on Mother’s Day since I will have a house full of people.
DARLINGTON RACE SCHEDULE
SATURDAY, MAY 7th
10:30 AM -12:30 PM CUP SERIES PRACTICE /QUALIFYING (FS1)
SUNDAY, MAY 8TH
3:30 PM ET CUP SERIES RACE (FS1)
DRIVER RANKINGS FOR DARLINGTON
Darlington Raceway is a 1.366-mile, high-banked, egg-shaped track. The track is similar in size and banking as Darlington. The surfaces are drastically different and the shapes of the tracks are different too. We should be able to use a lot of the data from Dover for the race Sunday. Tire fall-off will be huge in this race. The drivers who can manage their tires the best will be up front. I do not expect the tires to explode though, like we had at Dover. (Just good tire-wear throughout the race)
I am using the Driver Rating from the race at Dover, the combined Driver Rating from the races on the Intermediate Tracks and the Driver Rating from the last two spring races at Darlington (the spring and fall events at Darlington race different so I am focusing on the drivers who run well in the spring). This should give us a good baseline to work with and then narrow down the picks after practice Saturday. We must focus our picks on the drivers who are fast on the long runs and ignore the single-lap speeds.
Here are my Driver Rankings for the Goodyear 400…
| 1. Kyle Larson |
| 2. Martin Truex Jr. |
| 3. Chase Elliott |
| 4. Ross Chastain |
| 5. Kyle Busch |
| 6. Kevin Harvick |
| 7. Denny Hamlin |
| 8. William Byron |
| 9. Alex Bowman |
| 10. Joey Logano |
| 11. Erik Jones |
| 12. Ryan Blaney |
| 13. Chris Buescher |
| 14. Brad Keselowski |
| 15. Austin Dillon |
| 16. Tyler Reddick |
| 17. Aric Almirola |
| 18. Daniel Suarez |
| 19. Christopher Bell |
| 20. Kurt Busch |
| 21. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. |
| 22. Bubba Wallace |
| 23. Austin Cindric |
| 24. Chase Briscoe |
| 25. Ty Dillon |
| 26. Justin Haley |
| 27. Daniel Hemric |
| 28. Cole Custer |
| 29. Michael McDowell |
| 30. Todd Gilliland |
| 31. Harrison Burton |
| 32. Corey LaJoie |
| 33. Cody Ware |
| 34. Josh Bilicki |
| 35. J.J. Yeley |
| 36. B.J. McLeod |
* These rankings will be updated Saturday after qualifying
Good Luck This Week!
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