Since 2020, the regular season has concluded at Daytona, which has provided plenty of excitement as drivers scramble to win and get into the Playoffs. However, NBC’s coverage of the Paris Olympics shuffled the schedule for the 2024 season, and Darlington will conclude the regular season this year.
That means Daytona’s huge banking and huge moments don’t include the exclamation mark of a last-chance race for drivers fighting to make the Playoffs, particularly those on points.
Still, Noah Gragson pointed out that the win-and-you’re-in Playoff format adopted by NASCAR means that every race can be a huge moment with a new winner as the season winds down.
“I mean, you have 25 opportunities before the final race of the Cup Series to lock yourself in,” he pointed out. So, you know, there’s that one last shot, but you also had a shot at Talladega and Atlanta earlier this year and the Daytona 500 and Daytona summer race.”
That point was totally proven by Harrison Burton’s win last week in the Daytona summer race. Though it may have been two races before the Playoffs rather than the one just before, Burton and his family were just as emotional and the win was just as big a made-for-TV moment.
“There’s not really much of a difference in my mind,” Carson Hocevar agreed about whether the finale should be at Daytona or Darlington. “I mean, it’s still the win-and-you’re-in, so it doesn’t really matter if this is the second-to-last race or the last one, the 21 car would still be in. So it doesn’t really matter in my mind.”
Still, if you’ve grown accustomed to the regular season finale at a superspeedway, you might need to change those expectations. Darlington can be chaotic and unpredictable in its own right, but for different reasons.
While superspeedway racing involves a high-speed pack of cars pushing each other in the draft, meaning that huge wrecks can wipe out contenders for the lead, the Southern 500 at Darlington is 500 miles of racing an inch away from the wall, and pushing an inch too wide and taking down a tire can wipe out contenders for the lead in much the same way.
It’s a grueling race of attrition based on damage and wear to the cars, not so much from getting caught up in wrecks.
“I don’t know if it adds more excitement or less,” Gragson compared Daytona and Darlington. “Superspeedways are wild, so Daytona being the cutoff race is entertaining from the fan’s side. But I think this place still gets entertaining with how tricky and tough it is to be able to run the wall here to be fast and stay out of trouble.
“The Cup cars are pretty durable so you see guys run the wall and, if they hit, they don’t get as much damage as the older generation car with the steel body. So the cars are a lot more durable, a lot more guys probably finish this race than with the older generation car just because they’re more durable, but I still think it’s exciting.”
And there can still be surprise winners from outside Playoffs points positions at Darlington. However, it takes more of a sense of the track. Erik Jones, for instance, only has three wins in the Cup Series, but two of them have come at Darlington.
His No. 43 Legacy Motor Club team has had an underwhelming year, sitting 26th in points. However, he has a perfectly good shot to win, and a Playoff berth would heal any bad performance.
Besides Jones, Austin Cindric – who has a win of his own this season – explained that bold strategies can put almost any driver in contention at the end with a shot to win.
“Yeah, I could see more hail-mary strategies,” Cindric said. “Lots of different ways to go about these stages, and to see what other guys are willing to do throughout the race. If a caution comes out at the right time, it could really set somebody up for a surprise win. And I feel like the field’s always super tight here, a very track-position-oriented racetrack.”
Still, Cindric would rather Darlington open the Playoffs rather than precede them because it gives a fitting challenge to the race to decide the overall champion.
“It’s definitely very different from the chaos and the have-to-wait-until-the-last-lap feeling at Daytona as the regular season finale, but I think this is a great first race for the Playoffs because it does kind of weed out a lot of mistakes,” he justified.
“This race, even veteran drivers are prone to a lot of mistakes. It’s a good warmup for the Playoffs because you’ve got to be mistake-free the first two rounds, I feel like.”
Cindric will be happy that NASCAR’s 2025 schedule has Daytona ending the regular season and Darlington opening the Playoffs, a return to what has become the norm.
Daytona might be more popular with the fans and the drivers might not care, but Darlington is still an interesting opener. It challenges car and driver alike, meaning it’s still somewhat unpredictable, but in a way that remains in the hands of drivers, pit crews, and crew chiefs.
If a driver wants to secure a points berth or win to get into the Playoffs at Darlington, they’re going to have to earn it. So, while the racing may look different coming to the checkered flag at Darlington versus Daytona, expect it to feel much the same.
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