With the start of the NASCAR Cup playoffs set to begin Sunday at Darlington Raceway, all 16 drivers are trying to come up with strategy to advance past the first round and move on to the Round of 12. That means having strong enough runs at the three first round venues: Darlington Raceway, World Wide Technology Raceway and Bristol Motor Speedway.
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But if any driver is looking ahead or worrying more about WWTR or Bristol than Darlington, they’re making a big mistake, as per NBC’s NASCAR analysts Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte.
Their message is simple: focus solely on Darlington, aka The Lady In Black. The egg-shaped 1.366-mile oval presents arguably the biggest challenge of the three tracks in the first round. If a driver has a mediocre or poor run at Darlington, they’ll be playing catch-up at the other two races, and depending on how they finish at Darlington, it may be too late to rally at WWTR or Bristol.
One only has to look at how fickle Darlington can be: there have been eight different winners in the last 10 runnings of the Southern 500 (only Denny Hamlin and Erik Jones have won the race twice in the last 10 years). That means Darlington can be more of a wildcard track than Bristol.
“In my eyes, what I’m doing as a competitor is I’m not looking at New Hampshire, Kansas or the (Charlotte) Roval,” Burton said after Saturday night’s regular season finale at Daytona. “I’m paying attention to Darlington, St. Louis, Bristol. I got to get it get out of that round first.
“But you do that race by race. So right now my brain is on Darlington. That’s really all I’m going to think about. Darlington, crew chief, engineer, they’ve got to be thinking St. Louis, Bristol. But me and my prep, I am focused 100% on Darlington.
“And by the way, that track requires 100% of your attention. It is the most difficult racetrack to be successful, run 500 miles, not have a problem of anywhere that we will go (during the playoffs).”
Letarte has big advice for NASCAR drivers in the first playoff round
Letarte added, “I don’t think there’s a better place to end the regular season than Daytona. I don’t think there’s a better place to start the playoffs than I think the toughest test on the schedule, 500 miles at the track. Too tough to tame.
“St. Louis to me is the wild card. We’ve only been there three times. This will be the fourth. It’s very odd. It doesn’t really fit into a category. It’s not a mile and a half. It’s not a short track. It’s not this, it’s not that.
“And then Bristol, I mean, Kyle Larson just whipped everybody in the spring. But remember, this isn’t as much about the front of the pack. This is going to be that fifth to 15th, fifth to 18th, who can advance is really the key in this first round.”
