Darlington Raceway by the Numbers

Steep, and a momentum oval. Darlington carries 2 tags in our system. The format is Steep: a high-banked oval, 25 degrees through turns 1 and 2, and 23 through 3 and 4. Momentum Oval is the skill tag, the bucket for tracks where carrying speed through the corner beats braking and rotating. Both tags carry weight in Thursday's Darlington projections, which read each driver's most recent races on each type, whatever season they came in.

Larson4.3

Blaney8.0

Hamlin8.0

Hamlin7.9

Reddick8.9

Byron11.7

Denny Hamlin makes both lists and Kyle Larson leads the steep one outright. Track-type form is one of the signals inside Thursday's projections; the full track profiles live in the research library.

The long race is won from further back. Since 2005 the 21 runnings of the 367-lap race have gone to a winner with an average starting spot of 8.9, and 7 of them were won from outside the top-10. The 8 shorter Darlington races over the same span produced an average starting spot of 4.6, and 1 of them was won from outside the top-10.

Green-flag runs go longer in the 367-lap race. Our lap-by-lap data covers every Darlington Cup race since 2020. The 367-lap race averages 35.6 green-flag laps per run and 4.5 runs of 30 laps or more per race. The shorter races average 28.0 and 3.1.

And the tires go away. By laps 26 to 28 of a green-flag run at Darlington, the average Next Gen car is running 1.07 seconds a lap slower than it was on laps 4 to 6, a 3.5 percent fade, measured across 1,112 driver runs since 2022.

Only 10 of 29 drivers who led the most laps won. Leading the most laps in a Darlington Cup race since 2005 has produced the win 10 times in 29 tries, and the other 19 races went to someone else.

18 different winners in 29 races. Wins since 2005, both Darlington dates counted. The Southern 500 opens the Chase this year, and no driver has taken more than 5 of the 29.

Hamlin5

Keselowski2

Briscoe2

Jones2

Larson1,070

Hamlin1,022

Kyle Larson has led the most Darlington laps since 2005. Larson has 1,070 laps led across 17 Darlington starts and 1 win, in 2023, from 18th on the grid with 55 laps led. Larson's 2 biggest days without a win: 284 laps led and 3rd in 2018, then 263 laps led and 4th in 2024. Larson's average finish at Darlington is 14.1.

Denny Hamlin has the best record in Sunday's field. 5 wins, 20 top-10s and an 8.0 average finish in 28 starts, plus 1,022 laps led. The next best average among the entered drivers is Tyler Reddick at 10.8.

Chase Briscoe has won the last 2 Southern 500s. The 2025 running was a takeover: he started 2nd and led 309 of the 367 laps, the most by any Darlington winner since 2005.

The entered field

Driver	Starts	Wins	Top-10	Avg	Laps led
Denny Hamlin	28	5	20	8.0	1,022
Tyler Reddick	14	1	8	10.8	399
Brad Keselowski	25	2	13	11.7	574
Erik Jones	17	2	10	12.6	132
Ty Gibbs	8	-	3	13.9	36
Kyle Larson	17	1	9	14.1	1,070
Chase Briscoe	11	2	3	14.2	342
Joey Logano	25	1	11	14.4	293
William Byron	16	1	8	14.9	331
Chris Buescher	18	-	8	15.2	63
Christopher Bell	14	-	4	15.6	59
Chase Elliott	19	-	8	15.8	165
Austin Cindric	9	-	1	16.1	-
Austin Dillon	20	-	5	16.5	-
Ross Chastain	14	-	4	16.9	137
Ryan Blaney	19	-	5	17.9	24
Connor Zilisch	1	-	-	18.0	-
Bubba Wallace	16	-	5	18.7	63
Todd Gilliland	9	-	-	19.4	-
Carson Hocevar	6	-	2	20.2	4
Ryan Preece	13	-	-	20.2	-
Alex Bowman	16	-	4	20.5	42
Zane Smith	5	-	-	21.0	-
Noah Gragson	6	-	-	21.8	-
Daniel Suarez	17	-	2	22.1	1
Ty Dillon	13	-	-	22.3	8
Cole Custer	10	-	-	22.6	-
Shane van Gisbergen	4	-	-	23.0	7
Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	21	-	1	23.3	-
A.J. Allmendinger	16	-	1	23.5	-
John Hunter Nemechek	8	-	2	24.6	15
Josh Berry	6	-	1	25.8	5
Michael McDowell	22	-	3	26.1	-
Austin Hill	1	-	-	31.0	-
Cody Ware	8	-	-	31.9	2
Riley Herbst	3	-	-	32.3	-
Chad Finchum	-	-	-	-	-
Corey Heim	-	-	-	-	-

Every Darlington Cup winner since 2005