Darlington Gives NASCAR Another Classic, Now Give the Lady Her Due

It was everything that NASCAR is.

Sunday (Sept. 1) night’s Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway might have been the final race before the playoffs, with everything on the line that that implies, but it was also what it has always been: the one every driver wants to win.

Next to the Daytona 500, the Southern 500, NASCAR’s oldest race, has been the one circled on every driver’s wish list. Winning it meant something more than winning anywhere else.

If you need proof, listen to race winner Chase Briscoe’s radio after he crossed the finish line. Briscoe, through tears, shouts to his team not that he has made the playoffs in a stunning, perfectly executed pass, but that he had won the Southern 500.

And he won it in classic fashion. Kyle Larson might have dominated, but Briscoe and his team played their opportunity exactly right. When Ross Chastain gambled on older tires on a late caution, Larson was challenged at the front for the first time, and Briscoe took full advantage, sweeping by both Larson and Chastain to take the lead. He held on through one more restart, dispatching Larson.

But then came Kyle Busch. Busch, hungry, tired of falling short, roared from eighth to second and then set out after Briscoe. He got close a couple of times. Briscoe got loose a couple of times, but despite Busch, one of the greatest drivers of his generation, couldn’t quite get close enough to make a move. The night was Briscoe’s.

Perhaps it wasn’t on the level of the door-to-door, knockdown drag-out race to the finish that Ricky Craven and Kurt Busch put on in Darlington’s spring race in 2003, nor was it the 14-lap drubbing that Ned Jarrett put on the field in the 1965 Southern 500.

But it was a classic Darlington show nonetheless. 

Nicknamed the Lady in Black and the Track Too Tough to Tame, drivers must race Darlington first and each other second. Forget that for a single lap and the Lady will reach out and gut-punch you. But dance with the Lady and do it right and she will reward you well. 

Because it was the Southern 500, the final race before the payoffs and it was a fantastic race, Sunday’s race will go down as one to remember for years to come.

There have been a few great races this year, with finishes that should resonate on any fan’s scale. There have been closer finishes…but this was Darlington, and it was special. All the ghosts of what NASCAR has been and still can be gathered at Darlington in droves, forcing not just a look into the sport’s storied past, but also into its future,

NASCAR once tried to diminish Darlington, moving the Southern 500’s traditional date to California and then Atlanta Motor Speedway. But nobody, not the fans, not the drivers and crews, not the ghosts, ever let NASCAR forget the one race that belonged on that weekend. The Southern 500.

The race is back where it belongs on the schedule now, and she still makes the drivers pay attention to her all race long. 

The race owes the Olympics a debt of gratitude because the forced two-week break allowed the Southern 500, NASCAR’s oldest tradition, to set the field for its playoffs, its new era of crowning a champion. There’s something poetic about that; if NASCAR has to have a playoff system (the regular season came down to a single point on the final lap of the final race, so whether anything else is necessary is open to interpretation) then it’s only right that to make the field, drivers must tame Darlington one last time each year.

But the best thing about Sunday’s race was that it wasn’t just about the playoffs. Briscoe’s team is closing its doors in ten weeks. Briscoe will move on, but there was more than a playoff berth at stake for the driver who Tony Stewart handpicked to drive his own No. 14 car. There was proving that there was no quit in his team or himself. There were questions about whether he could be a NASCAR Cup Series contender. It was about the playoffs because everything has to be these days, but it was about a driver and his team and something to prove.

Kyle Busch, too, had more on the line than a title run. A two-time champion, Busch has struggled this season, often with bad luck rather than anything tangible, but also with a team that was a step behind the elite this year, and his role in bringing it back to glory. Busch also had, and still has, a 19-year winning streak to fight for. Twenty years is a long time to be at the top in racing. Cars change, tracks change and the rules change. To keep winning despite that is, in some ways, as much a testament to Busch’s tenacity and talent as his two titles. He showed Sunday that he won’t go down without a fight, playoffs be damned.

The race outshone the previous week’s typical Daytona International Speedway mayhem by a county mile. The 2025 schedule is already set, but going forward, the Southern 500, run on Labor Day weekend when summer unofficially comes to its close, just seems right as the race that sets the field and determines the regular season champion, the champion who still gets crowned based on a full season of excellence instead of a stick-and-ball format that was never meant for racing.

Tyler Reddick finished 10th Sunday night, not contending for the win and the regular season title doesn’t get the attention it should, but the fact that he ran 500 miles at Darlington, one of the toughest tracks in the sport, while miserably sick with a stomach bug, to win that honor by one point is also the stuff of legend, a story that people should be telling a decade from now. His race was as gritty and tough a run as any driver has run.

The bonus of ending the regular season with the Lady in Black is that it allows for more than one week off for the entire season. NASCAR could keep the traditional Easter break and add a week in late summer. Teams deserve that time to reset and gird for a playoff run.

Perhaps the difference is best summed up by the last two finishes.

Harrison Burton’s first career win at Daytona was exciting, with all the crashes and mayhem that fans have come to expect from the speedway on the beach. It was wild and crazy and will make the highlight reels for a while.

But Briscoe’s Darlington grit will be remembered for years. It was a classic race with strategy gambles, gritty drivers, and the will of the Lady in Black. It’ll be remembered because it was everything that NASCAR is, was, and should be. 

That’s what should set up the making of a champion.