Who… should you be talking about after the race?
Winning at Darlington Raceway is as much about racing the racetrack as it is outrunning the competition. The track is known as the Lady in Black for the tantalizing high line around the track, where cars run so close to the wall that they often brush it coming off the corners, leaving a black “Darlington stripe” on the back fender.
Stripes were earned. pic.twitter.com/9pIZ1PgGzl
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) April 7, 2025
This time, though, the race winner didn’t have to dance with the Lady in Black — he just had to have a fast pitstop and a good jump on an overtime restart. Not that Denny Hamlin doesn’t know how to dance with her, but his fifth win at NASCAR’s original superspeedway required less finesse and more well-timed teamwork.
For most of the day, it was William Byron who had the Goodyear 400 well in hand. He won the first two stages and led the first 243 of 297 total laps. Byron had a lightning-fast No. 24 car and early cautions fell his way. However, the final round of green-flag stops stymied his team. Byron waited a couple laps too long to pit for fresh tires, no doubt wanting to maximize his last set, but that cost him the lead. Byron wasn’t quite as speedy in traffic as he was out front.
Tyler Reddick eventually took over the top spot, but it was Ryan Blaney who stormed forward on the final run, tracking Reddick down from more then three seconds behind to take the lead with just over 10 laps to go.
Unfortunately for Blaney, Kyle Larson spun with four to go, bringing out a caution. That brought the leaders to pit road for a last set of tires, and Hamlin’s team reeled off the best stop of the day, handing him the lead for an overtime restart. Hamlin timed the restart perfectly while Reddick stumbled for a split second, and that was all Hamlin needed. He held on easily for the final two laps as the battle for second raged behind him. Byron took that spot, followed by Bell, Reddick and Blaney.
This pit crew gets to hoist the trophy today pic.twitter.com/2rZeHcqCPz
— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) April 7, 2025
On the other hand…
Larson entered the weekend as one of the favorites, but qualified just 19th, and his weekend went from bad to worse when the race started. Just four laps in, Larson spun and slammed the inside wall. He spent over 160 laps in the garage for repairs and finally got back on track to try and capitalize on any points available, only to spin again with four laps to go in almost the exact same spot.
Big trouble and heavy damage for Kyle Larson! #NASCARonFS1 pic.twitter.com/E5Qgzbii0i
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) April 6, 2025
In Larson’s last five Darlington starts, he has a win and two top fives, but also three finishes of 20th or worse. His aggressive style works at a lot of tracks, and that includes Darlington when he meets the ragged edge just right … but when he doesn’t, the Lady in Black has her way with him.
CAUTION. More trouble for Kyle Larson in Darlington.
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) April 6, 2025
NASCAR OVERTIME!!! pic.twitter.com/m5TcpefISG
What… does this mean for the points standings?
Nothing changes at the top except that Byron extends his points lead from 16 to 49 points over second place. Thanks to sweeping the opening stages and his runner-up finish, Byron maximized his earnings for the day, collecting eight points more than race winner Hamlin.
Hamlin gained four spots with his W, moving into second behind Byron, while teammate Bell grabbed third, 52 points behind Byron. Chase Elliott fell from third to fourth this week despite finishing eighth, and Reddick took over fifth place.
Larson took a hit at the top, falling from second to sixth after his two-spin, 37th-place finish. Blaney moves up three spots from 10th to seventh; Bubba Wallace maintains his eight-place position, with Joey Logano holding in ninth and Alex Bowman falling to 10th after a brush with the wall.
Where… did he come from?
This week’s stealth finish goes to Ross Chastain, who started 25th and didn’t score a single stage point, but when it counted, Chastain finished a solid seventh, his fourth top 10 of 2025.
Actually, all three Trackhouse Racing cars improved on their starting spots by a good margin. Daniel Suarez started 30th and finished 15th and Shane van Gisbergen gained 16 spots over his 36th-place start to come home in 20th.
Is that a great day for the organization? Not really, but it is an important one. All three teams and drivers improved throughout the race through a combination of speed and strategy. They capitalized on mistakes to better themselves. Van Gisbergen improved on his only previous Darlington start while both Suarez and Chastain finished well above their career Darlington averages.
Overall, it was a good day for the organization, and one they should circle on the schedule as a week where they ground out a solid day without mistakes or drama. That’s a small victory in itself.
When… was the moment of truth?
There’s nothing wrong with winning a race on pit road — it’s all part of the game, but in this case, Hamlin’s perfectly executed stop and restart actually detracted from the finish by taking the race away from the drivers who had raced for it all day.
And there was some suspense — Hamlin is well-known for drawing pit-road speeding penalties, so there were some moments of wondering whether he’d cost himself the race by doing it. There was no call, so give the W to the No. 11 crew.
Still, the finish was better for race fans than Byron nearly wiring it to win would have been. That’s a bit of a shame — Byron was deserving, but Darlington just got her second race back after a couple of decades, and good finishes are important to the track keeping the date.
What gives Darlington its reputation is how difficult it is to conquer. Putting together a complete race is important, and that was where Byron and Co. fell short — they didn’t quite adapt to the hand the other teams dealt them on the final round of stops. Reddick and Blaney did the best job of appeasing the Lady this week, and Hamlin’s win falls short of the mark; it’s more like he fooled her than took her dancing.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
NASCAR rolls into the Tennessee foothills for a three-series show at Bristol Motor Speedway for the third race in a five-week tour of some of the tracks that built the sport.
One thing to keep an eye on is just how many of the nearly 150,000 seats are filled. They have been noticeably empty in recent years, though the days when the waiting list for tickets was years long is still part of many fans’ memories.
While it doesn’t look like either of Bristol’s race dates is in any kind of jeopardy, the empty seats aren’t a great look, and because of the design of the grandstands, removing seats as several other venues have done isn’t an option without extensive reengineering. Tracks have seen an uptick in attendance over the last couple of years, and part of Bristol’s issue is the sheer number of seats it has. Any sellout at Darlington would not fill Bristol to half capacity. There doesn’t appear to be real urgency here, but it is worth an eyeball.
As for who to watch, Kyle Busch is the active win leader. But in the last ten races, it’s Larson and Hamlin who have combined to win half of them, with Larson posting a stellar average finish of 5.1 during that span. Hamlin and Elliott also boast averages inside the top 10. Busch also has a win in that stretch and is so hungry that counting him out would be unwise.
If you like a horse of a darker shade, take a gander at Ryan Preece, who is starting to show come real chops on a weekly basis. He’s averaged a 14.3 overall at Bristol, good enough for fifth in career average at the track among all active drivers.
How… did this race stack up?
It’s hard to compare races at Darlington for a couple of reasons. One, the first race in NASCAR’s top series took place in 1950. There have been upwards of 125 races in total, and everything from the cars to the surface and everything that happens on pit road has changed radically many times over.
Added to the sheer number of races to compare with — the 2003 classic in which Ricky Craven beat Kurt Busch by an eyelash is still one of the closest finishes ever in the Cup Series, making it hard for even a really good race to the checkers not to pale in comparison.
Darlington is a track where the racing you see on television will never compare favorably to what you see in the stands. When you sit there, surrounded by ghosts and echoes of NASCAR’s past, it’s impossible not to feel something more. While Byron was running away with the race, there was action in the field that the broadcast didn’t show, and that’s too bad. That’s true everywhere, but Darlington is truly a track that every true fan should see in person.
Early on, this week’s event was pretty bland: arguably one of the sport’s most vanilla drivers dominated the first three quarters with little action at all near the front. It got better in the final stage, when Byron’s pit strategy cost him the lead on the final round of green-flag stops.
As the laps ticked down, Blaney and Reddick made it interesting, with Blaney’s long-run setup the key to a late-race battle, but a second spin by Larson ended what would have been a better race had it been allowed to play out.
This season is off to a fairly predictable start, and this race was just middle-of-the-road — even for the season’s lackluster first two months.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.