Sure, we have no idea what we’re about to witness in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series return at Darlington Raceway (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), but the statistics don’t lie.
That’s why Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Erik Jones and Martin Truex Jr. may have a slight edge with five total wins at the 1.366-mile, egg-shaped South Carolina oval. In fact, JGR drivers have won four of the last seven Cup races at the venue.
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Jones is the most recent winner in the No. 20 Toyota, earning his second career NASCAR Cup Series victory in last year’s Bojangles’ Southern 500, beating out teammate Busch for the triumph. Jones has never finished outside the top 10 at Darlington and owns a 4.67 average finish in five career starts (three in the Cup Series and two in the Xfinity Series) – the best all-time among drivers with more than two starts.
To put Jones’ stellar numbers in perspective, the only driver to start his Darlington career with more top-10 finishes is Bill Elliott, who didn’t finish outside the top 10 until his sixth race there.
Busch also has one Darlington victory in 2008, but the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion has finished 11th or better in the past 10 events.
For Hamlin, the two-time Southern 500 winner restarts the 2020 season at his best track in terms of average finish at 7.8. Hamlin most recently recorded a victory at Darlington in 2017, while his first one came back in 2010. The No. 11 driver is locked into the playoffs with his third Daytona 500 win and he’ll go into Sunday as one of the favorites at Darlington.
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Truex, driver of the organization’s No. 19 entry, won the Southern 500 in 2016 with Furniture Row Racing — then a JGR affiliate — and has results of 11th or better in four of the last five Darlington races, finishing 15th last season.
While JGR has been a tick off in the first four races of the season, it’s hard to beat experience at a place like Darlington. These four drivers have plenty of it. Now it’s just a matter of shaking the cobwebs off with no practice, unloading fast off the hauler and getting into a rhythm early.