Daytona, Talladega, Charlotte, and a handful of other venues carry prestige that cements a driver’s name in NASCAR lore. Yet Darlington stands apart, loved even by those who rarely tame it. For two-time Southern 500 winner Greg Biffle, that admiration comes not only from its history but from the brutal challenge it dishes out every lap.
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Biffle believes Darlington is unlike any other circuit on the schedule, which is exactly why drivers feel compelled to test themselves there.
“I think you like it because of how nostalgic and how difficult it is and the prestige about just racing here and the history it has, right? If you win here, you definitely earned it. And just to run here is enjoyable, just because of what it is, but it is very difficult,” he said.
At the “Lady in Black,” drivers spend 367 laps glued to the wall with no margin for error. Few tracks offer that thin line between win and disaster. Most, Biffle explained, have morphed into pack-style racing like Homestead, but Darlington remains its own beast.
He added, “This racetrack, you drive down in the corner and you let off the gas and turn in. At that point, you’ve committed whether I’m going to hit the wall or not. Now it’s wait and see, and that’s it.
“So, we don’t race at other racetracks really like that, where you’re lifting on the straightaway and you turn down in the corner and it’s just decelerating. It compresses and slides up, and you’re just praying. And you have to do that lap after lap after lap, and it’s just hard to do. It really is.”
“(Corey Heim) has a solid chance of beating that record. I hope he doesn’t.” @gbiffle smiled through the thought of Heim possibly beating Biffle’s 9-win Truck record.
He also discussed racing with Cleetus McFarland in ARCA or Trucks. #NASCAR
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History backs up his view. Five times, the driver who captured Darlington’s playoff opener went on to win the Cup championship: Kurt Busch in 2004, Tony Stewart in 2011, Brad Keselowski in 2012, Martin Truex Jr. in 2017, and Joey Logano in 2024.
Yet in the last seven Darlington races before Briscoe’s record-breaking win on Sunday, seven different winners had taken the checkered flag, stressing Biffle’s point that the track spares no one.
