Several drivers have commented on the unpredictable and potential ‘wild’ race that fans may see on Sunday at Darlington Raceway – a track already Too Tough To Tame (3 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Across the board, NASCAR Cup Series drivers are suggesting this will be a must-see race.
Here’s a sampling of the comments for any advanced coverage of this weekend’s race:
Denny Hamlin
“One thing I will tell you is that heads up on Darlington, you want to see some cars out of control here in a few weeks. … “These cars, with essentially little to no underbody because we’re now going to the short track aerodynamic package for Darlington, these cars are out of control. I’m predicting four seconds of fall off, it might be more. It’s just the cars with the underbody taken off and that simple diffuser, just even on new tires, just absolutely out of control. So, it’s going to be a wild card race.”
Chase Briscoe
‘“It’s gonna be absolutely out of control. It’s gonna be I think the hardest track we run on all year long. The added power is one thing, but the biggest thing is taking the diffuser and everything off. I mean, I’ve ran the sim for probably a week-and-a-half and you are crashing every corner on every lap, even on new tires. … It is out of control. It’ll be very interesting in practice, qualifying, like, literally the whole weekend I think is gonna be must see. One team is gonna hit it right and they are gonna murder the field I feel like, just because of how drastically different this thing drives.” – From Jeff Gluck’s ‘Gluckcast’ Podcast
Ryan Blaney
“Darlington is going to be a great race. It’s gonna be tons of fall off, big comers and goers, the way it should be.”
Brad Keselowski
“My eyes are wide open. The biggest thing I’m thinking about at Darlington is to go 50 laps on a set of tires was almost impossible with the Next Gen car in the last two or three seasons, and now that we have more horsepower and less aero, I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to go 35 laps. So, keeping up with the tires is going to be a big challenge. The drivers managing it, the teams putting our setups to where it can do it. Darlington is going to be a heavy lift. It’s always a heavy lift, but it’s a heavier lift now, I think, with these circumstances and a lot of unknowns entering the race at Darlington. It might turn out no different, but I don’t think that will be the case. I think it’s gonna be a really difficult race.”
Christopher Bell
“I think Darlington is going to be very, very, very different than what we’ve had in the years past with the Next Gen car. So, I’m excited about it. I think it has potential to look like a much different Darlington race than what we’ve had in the in the last couple of years. I just had a ton of fun at Phoenix. I thought Phoenix was night and day different than what we’ve had the last, well, since we’ve started going there, it’s been really hard to pass and this race was the first race. I felt like you could actually make your way through the field if you had a better car. I proved that; Ryan Blaney proved that it seemed like. If you had a better car, you were able to pass, and I think a lot of that a lot of that was due to the horsepower and the added horsepower made the track feel slick. The tires degraded. We were sliding around, and the best cars made the way to the front. I think Darlington is going to be more of the same.”
Daniel Suarez
“It’s going to be crazy there, honestly. I’m actually looking forward to it. I’m super excited for the challenge, but Darlington is a very difficult race track with less power and more downforce. Now we have less downforce and more power, so it’s going to be tricky. Yesterday I was in the simulator doing some post-Las Vegas work, and we did only for one hour, we did Darlington and it was very difficult to drive. I spent more time backward than going in the right direction. So, you never know what it’s going to be, right? We have never done it, so even the simulation, the simulators, we don’t really know how accurate they’re going to be until we’re there on Saturday. We are trying to prepare ourselves as good as possible with what we have and looking forward to the challenge.” – From SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Interview
Kyle Busch
“Darlington Raceway is tough. It’s definitely one of the hardest tracks on the schedule with the way the asphalt is worn out. You’ve got to run right next to the wall at Darlington. Obviously, the place is famous for the ‘Darlington Stripe’ for a reason. One lap, you feel really good. The next lap, you’re out of control, sideways, spinning out. You just never know. A lot of times you go through a lot of changes at that track. Starting out the track is always loose. It gets really tight during the middle part of the race and then starts to free up back up at the end. You’re always chasing it with the car.”
Cole Custer
“Darlington is going to be a fun one, as we’re going to have a lot less downforce with the new rules package, and more motor than last year. So it is going to be a lot of slipping and sliding around, and it’s going to be a curveball for all of the teams to figure out, and it is going to be exciting to see who can put it all together this weekend.”
Connor Zilisch
“We’ve got a really unique package this year that’s going to bring a lot of question marks. The Trackhouse team has been working really hard to make sure that we show up on the right side of it. It’s going to be a chaotic race with low downforce, high horsepower, and soft tire package. I’m excited to see what that’s like.”
