Best of: Darlington Stripes through time
By Staff Report | Wednesday, August 28, 2019

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A Darlington Stripe is a driver's rite of passage at South Carolina's iconic race track. The stripe appears on a race car as a driver runs up against the wall and it sucks the car onto it, leaving the right side with a mark -- the Darlington Stripe.

Although if you are following the track around the 3-4 turn, it appears that the concrete wall is
jutting out into the track as you exit turn 4.......excuse makers!

The BS'ers say the wall jumped up and hit them...

Here's Richard Petty's No. 43 with some damage in 1964.

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
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2008: Clint Bowyer

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2008: J.J. Yeley

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2008: Kyle Busch

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2009: Greg Biffle

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2009: Kyle Busch

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2009: Sam Hornish Jr.

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2012: Jimmie Johnson

 

Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images
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2014: Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

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2015: Alex Bowman

Photo by Jerry Markland/Getty Images
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2015: Austin Dillon

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2015: Brett Moffitt

 

Photo by Jonathan Moore/Getty Images
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2015: Chase Elliott

Photo by Robert Laberge/NASCAR via Getty Images
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2015: Danica Patrick

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2015: Kurt Busch

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2015: Kyle Busch

 

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2016: Brad Keselowski

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2016: Brad Keselowski

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2016: Brian Scott

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2017: Corey LaJoie

 

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How Darlington’s distinctive design was made

By
Staff Report NASCAR.com August 29, 2019 at 9:29 AM


Editor’s Note: This story first ran on NASCAR.com on September 2, 2015.

RELATED: Buy tickets See all the throwback paint schemes

The unique, oblong layout of Darlington Raceway was made by design in 1949, a year before it welcomed NASCAR’s big leagues for its first 500-mile race. How it happened is no small fish tale, in a manner of speaking.

When Harold Brasington purchased 70 acres of land from farm owner Sherman Ramsey for the site of NASCAR’s first superspeedway, there was one condition: Ramsey requested that the minnow pond on his property not be disturbed. The result was a set of turns on one end of the track that was tighter than the opposite end, which gives the track its distinctive egg shape.


The abstract layout continues to challenge NASCAR drivers and crew chiefs alike, nearly 70 years after its debut. Among the track’s many traditions is the “Darlington Stripe,” a black tire mark created from cars’ frequent brushes along the outside retaining wall.

RELATED: See the best Darlington Stripes in NASCAR history

Kyle Petty — who had a history of futility on the 1.366-mile track, with zero top-five finishes in 51 Cup starts at Darlington — famously quipped in an ESPN interview after a crash that the track would be better served to be filled with water for bass fishing. Had that unlikely conversion ever happened, Petty would have had a ready source for bait in Ramsey’s pond.


The track, known as “The Lady in Black,” has also been known as one that is “Too Tough to Tame” and is one of the more unique configurations in NASCAR and will provide quite the challenge for drivers in both the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series on Labor Day weekend.

 

Sarah Crabill Getty Images

Darlington 101: TV times, stats, rules package

By
Staff Report NASCAR.com August 28, 2019 at 4:06 PM


It’s NASCAR Throwback Weekend! Get ready for awesome paint schemes honoring NASCAR’s best to do it and intense action as Sunday marks the second-to-last race of the regular season and a whole lot of fun.

The Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway is on Sunday, Sept. 1 at 6 p.m. ET on NBCSN, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Brad Keselowski is the defending race winner, but it’s a Team Penske teammate that made the biggest jump in this week’s Power Rankings. The Joe Gibbs Racing camp still owns the top three spots and is coming in hot as we head to South Carolina.

RELATED: Darlington schedule

Here is the rest of the need-to-know information for Throwback Weekend.

TRACK DETAILS

Darlington Raceway is a 1.366-mile oval with 25-degree banking in Turns 1 and 2 and 23-degree banking in Turns 3 and 4. The track has 6-degree banking on the straights, and the frontstretch and backstretch are each 1,229 feet. The first race at Darlington was on Sept. 4, 1950. Johnny Mantz won the race after starting from the 43rd position.

RULES PACKAGE

The race at Darlington Raceway will feature the 2019 rules package with a tapered-spacer engine generating around 550 horsepower. After a change earlier in the season, the cars will feature aero ducts this weekend.

Each team will be provided with three sets of Goodyear Eagle Speedway Radial tires for practice, one set for qualifying and 14 sets for the race (a season-high number of sets). This means that they will have to go an average of just more than 26 laps per set to finish the race. This is the first time teams will run this combination of left- and right-side tires at Darlington. Like last season, these tires feature the same tread compounds, only with an update to the construction to align what is run at other tracks.

STATS

— The last eight races at Darlington Raceway have been won by eight different drivers, Toyota winning four of the last six.

— Jimmie Johnson has two chances left to make the playoffs. He currently sits minus-26 points to the bubble, but Darlington has been a pretty good track for him with 20 starts and three wins.

— Denny Hamlin is on a hot streak and is the only active driver to win at Darlington Raceway and not win a championship.

Source: Racing Insights

LIVE COVERAGE

This weekend’s race will air live at 6 p.m. ET on Sunday on NBCSN and will be streamed on the NBC Sports App. Radio coverage can be found on MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Also, follow along on NASCAR.com for live Lap-by-Lap coverage, the live leaderboard, Drive (featuring in-car cameras) and RaceView (subscription: in-car audio, stats, more). Be sure to set your lineup in Fantasy Live and make your picks in the Props Challenge.

2018 RACE WINNER

Kyle Larson dominated last season’s Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, leading 284 laps en route to a third-place finish. Brad Keselowski took home the victory, leading 24 laps and started 13th. Joey Logano, Keselowski’s Team Penske teammate, finished second and led 18 laps. Keselowski’s win marked the first of his career at the track.

ACTIVE DARLINGTON WINNERS

Jimmie Johnson, three times; Denny Hamlin, two times; Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski, one time each.

 

Earnhardt ready to race at Darlington

By
Terrin Waack NASCAR.com August 30, 2019 at 12:23 PM


DARLINGTON, S.C. – Driving a race car isn’t like riding a bike. Wobbles would lead to crashes. Speeds could never reach triple digits.

But, after a year-long hiatus, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is getting back behind the wheel.

The former full-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver who retired at the end of the 2017 season is as ready as can be to race in Saturday’s Xfinity Series event at Darlington Raceway (4 p.m. ET on NBC/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). It’ll mark just his second time back on track since retiring from full-time Cup competition, and he’s feeling the pressure. Unsurprisingly so.

“I was never not nervous about driving race cars,” Earnhardt said Friday. “I’ve raced all my life, but every race you were equally nervous as the last leading into qualifying or practice. It helped to get nervous. It’s a very wild experience being in there.”

RELATED: All of Earnhardt’s Cup wins Earnhardt’s best No. 8 paint schemes

Earnhardt last raced in 2018 at Richmond Raceway, where he qualified second, led 96 laps and finished fourth. He was in the No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet at the time. This weekend he’ll be steering the No. 8 for the same organization that he co-owns and the same manufacturer.

The single-digit number should bring back memories – it’s called NASCAR Throwback Weekend for a reason, right? Earnhardt commanded the No. 8 to 17 Cup wins from 2000-07, sporting the red Budweiser paint scheme.



“What surprised me was I hadn’t raced here since ’99 in an Xfinity car,” Earnhardt said. “I ran a bunch of Cup races here, but these are so different than the Cup cars.

“When Joey Logano ran at Chicago, he said many times during the week he just wasn’t really comfortable until about halfway through the race, when it started to click, because the difference between how the Cup cars and the Xfinity cars drive even this year is very extreme. So, I think it’s going to be halfway through the race before I have any real kind of understanding of what I need to be doing, where I need to be running.”

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See full media availability on NASCAR’s YouTube channel

In the Cup Series, Earnhardt averaged a 14.4 finish at Darlington in 22 starts. His best showing was a second-place run in 2014, and he had four top-five and 10 top-10 performances overall.

Earnhardt was right about his Xfinity Series past – 1999 was his last time at Darlington for that circuit. He did two races that year, finishing 11th and 12th. In his two other starts, both in 1998, he was second and 10th.

“I did come over here a couple month ago and ran about 15 laps when Noah (Gragson) was testing,” Earnhardt said. “That didn’t do anything to help my anxiety. Noah was faster than me, and it just reminded me how hard it is to drive these cars, how good these guys that drive them are and how hot and miserable it is inside there – some of the things you kind of forget about while in the booth and being a broadcaster.”

RELATED: Throwback paint schemes

Right, because TV is Earnhardt’s new reality. He works as an analyst for NBC Sports – normally.

Two weeks ago, at Bristol Motor Speedway, Earnhardt was absent from his on-camera gig after he and his family were involved in a private plane crash on their way to the Tennessee track. Everyone is fine and returning to their everyday life, including wife Amy and daughter Isla attending Earnhardt’s race Saturday.

The Sport Clips Haircuts VFW 200 will go green at 4 p.m. ET. Nerves will run through Earnhardt until then.

“I picked a real hard track to go to,” Earnhardt said. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking picking this place. It’s the throwback weekend. It’s hard not to want to be a part of it.”