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| Always great racing at Darlington. |
As payment for ruining my past weekend without it, I've been rewarded with paybacks of a Sunday night race at a historic track that produces amazing races and the cars will all be dolled up with throwback paint schemes. Yes, it was a fair deal.
Sunday's Bojangles Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway's 1.366-mile high-banked egg-shaped oval is going to be intense. I love everything about the track with four differing turns and banking different on each side of the track. I love "The Lady in Black" and all her amazing history that has been frustrating drivers since 1950. It is "The Track Too Tough to Tame" and part of the proof is the souvenir the Lady gives out called the Darlington Stripe.
“A Darlington Stripe is pretty easy to receive," Kyle Busch said. "Running at Darlington is so tough and we are carrying so much speed there nowadays that you have to run right up there against the wall in order to get your car pointed correctly for the next corner, the next apex you have to make. So, running next to the wall in (turn) one and (turn) two and turning down coming off of two and carrying big momentum and big speed down the backstretch in order to set yourself up for turn three is important.
"Running high in three and four all the way through the corner, trying to keep the momentum going, because it’s such a tighter corner that the radius difference between each end of the track, you try to spread that radius as wide as you can and that’s right up against the wall. So, at any moment that car can slip and, during a run when the tires fall off, you have to be aware of one to two seconds of tire fall-off and your car is slowing down and at any moment you might slip a little bit and tag that wall. It can be very easy to do.”
Kyle Busch's only win at Darlington came in 2008, but he's had the best car there at least three times. He's led laps in nine of his last 11 starts there and has finished no worse than 11th in his last nine starts. The Lady hasn't roughed him too much, but Busch doesn't exactly come in on a roll, or at least like he was in the first half of the season when he won four races. He hasn't won in his last 11 races, the last coming at Pocono on June 2.
Martin Truex Jr. has also been stuck on four wins for quite a while. His last win came at Sonoma on June 23. But his last four Darlington races have seen him finish 11th or better which includes his only Darlington win in 2016. Only one of his wins this season (Charlotte) have come with the race package using aero ducts and engines with 550 horsepower. The package using 750 horsepower on the shorter tracks have seen him be dominant.
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