Dominating the Darlington Dance

The Lady in Black danced the afternoon away with the driver of the number 24 Axalta Chevy, before dumping him for a new man. 

Throughout the first two stages of the race, William Byron was the driver of the race at Darlington, leading 243 of those laps. But a mistake during green flag pit stops cost him the race at the finish.  

Sunday’s race at Darlington started off chaotically. The driver of the number 5 Chevy, Kyle Larson, spun off of turn two and hit the inside wall on lap 4. Carson Hocevar in his number 77 Chevy would have a spin of his own. Twenty laps later in turn three, he had cut his right rear tire and spun when it went flat. . The track would continue to prove itself to be “too tough to tame” for Carson, as on lap 82 he would spin again. This time, Carson was struggling to not go two laps down, and got squeezed by race dominator William Byron and rookie Riley Herbst. 

It didn’t take much longer for another incident to happen, this time during a green flag pit stops. On lap 135, the number 6 Ford Mustang of Brad Keselowski would lose his right rear lug nut, just barely a lap after he came off pit road. He was able to collect himself and made his way to pit road without caution, until NASCAR threw the caution for said lug nut, four laps after the initial spin. This caution messed up the strategies for many drivers, especially Erik Jones. The driver of the number 43 Toyota Camry had just started to make his way down pit road when the yellow flag flew. According to NASCAR, Jones had entered a closed pit. When his crew informed him of his penalty, Jones had some words for NASCAR: 

“What the f—, NASCAR, are we f—ing doing? A car wrecked and we don’t throw it … limping around and now there’s nothing out here." 

The 43 car would finish 11th at the end of stage two, just missing out on a bonus point. 

Much later in the race, on lap 239, Tyler Reddick would be one of the first few to make green flag pit stops. Four laps later, leader William Byron would make his mistake on pit road, or should I say, by not coming to pit road sooner. 

“So if you’re the leader, William Byron, and you have a four second lead, you know the guy in second can pit. And if you run one extra lap, you should come out about two seconds in front of him.” Steve Letarte explained on NASCAR.com’s podcast Inside The Race.

Because Byron waited those four extra laps to make his pit stop, his major lead would get hit hard. He lost three positions, getting stuck in fourth.

 Back at the front of the field, Tyler Reddick had slowly but surely making his way to the back bumper of the new leader Ryan Blaney. Will he get there before the end of the race? We’ll never know as Larson experienced deja vu, spinning off of turn 2, striking the wall exactly where he had 286 laps earlier.

This caution saw all of the top runners hit pit road. Here, driver of the number 11, Denny Hamlin would prevail, using a swing around jack technique that hasn’t been seen since the days of Junior Johnson. While Junior did it to keep snooping officials away from the car, it worked just as well for Hamlin as he would gain two positions and the race lead. 

NASCAR Overtime. Two words that either give a driver hope or watch it fade away. William Byron had hope that he could cap off a race that he dominated. Byron would start right behind the new leader, giving him a great push into turn one. Byron wasn’t able to keep to the bumper of the 11, who watched the 24 go three wide with the 20 and 45 in his rearview mirror. The white flag flew, all Denny had to do was keep it clean for one more lap.  Denny rounded turn four, and made it back to the line without any issue.

After the race, FOX Sports’ Jamie Little was quick to get to the most dominant driver of the evening, and ask for his thoughts.

“It was looking like it would be a perfect race…Those guys could just be aggressive on the other side of the green flag cycle and we just lost control there…it stings in the moment for sure.”