Sports has shown us that the older the fanbase, the more nostalgic it is. When viewership is dominated by people with more reference to the sport’s history, the viewers are likely to hearken back to what they consider a “better time.” Sports like golf, horse racing, and baseball are victims of this “history bias” as the majority of their viewership comes from a 55+ crowd. It’s why today’s baseball players are compared to players from the 1960’s or 70’s because those were the players today’s MLB viewing audience grew up idealizing. Similarly, NASCAR falls victim to this idea of things being better in decades past and it manifests itself every late Summer in Darlington for the Southern 500.
(Psst… Hey you, yeah you reading this article. No, the editor and or writer of this article didn’t screw up and forget to activate the paywall. Awesemo.com’s NASCAR content is free this week so enjoy this Darlington preview, as well as the Cup and Xfinity metrics model, cheat sheets, and projections. If you like what you see, consider joining Awesemo to jump into expert slack chat, featuring myself, as well as a myriad of resources for all the major DFS sports.)
A 2017 study done by Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal and Magna Global identified the average viewing age of each of America’s most popular sports and NASCAR showed up with the fifth-highest average viewing age (58), just behind the PGA and LPGA tours, horse racing, and professional tennis. These results are eye-opening because just ten years ago, NASCAR had one of the youngest viewing demographics with an average age of 49. In other words, the same people watching Jimmie Johnson run away with title after title in 2008 are those watching Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick duel it out every weekend this year for track supremacy. NASCAR’s audience hasn’t changed, they’ve just gotten a decade older.
When an audience doesn’t change, sports don’t evolve. Thus, when the schedule rolls to late August and it’s time to head back to Darlington, it means the same old references to races of forty years ago, the same three catchphrases, and throwback paint schemes. For what appears to be a sport with shrinking viewership and profit margins, one might assume that something different would be done like what we hoped would have happened with the aero package that was used in the All-Star Race. However, we get another weekend with references to Richard Petty, A Lady in Black, Stripes, and the #43 car donning the red and blue STP colors like we haven’t seen Bubba driving with those colors in the past few weeks. Oh but this week it’s different because he’ll have STP on the hood and not some random bank that 85% of the country has never had the opportunity to do business with…
Quite frankly, if all we got was the addition of the aero package at Darlington it would be a dramatic improvement because the throwback paint schemes have been the most exciting part of this race in the past few years. Darlington has been a lap turner of late and produced some fairly lackluster events with it all but guaranteed that someone within the starting top-five was going to lead half or more of the race en route to victory. I can hear Ken Squier dropping the promo now, “Darlington: come for a Dale Earnhardt Senior reference or two by Richard Childress Racing, stay for a pretty uneventful race!”
Enough about how NASCAR sells this race, let’s talk about the actual event.
Dating back to 2013 with the change to the Generation Six Model Car, Darlington (whether run in May or August) had always seen a driver lead at least 196 laps or more (367 in total) of the race with finishes of 6th, 1st, 2nd, and 2nd. The introduction of segment cautions was supposed to alleviate this sort of boring race issue at every track and at some places we have seen it work. However, all it did last year at Darlington was more evenly divide the laps led between the drivers who led the first and second most laps. Instead of one driver leading over half of the race, we saw Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson both lead 124 laps. Furthermore, Martin Truex Junior led 76 laps himself, a total greater than what the driver who led the second most laps in the race had done dating back to 2013. In the end, the overall problem of one driver “dominating” the race wasn’t alleviated, NASCAR just made off like Karl Marx and redistributed the laps led a little more evenly as pictured below. From each driver according to his ability, to each driver according to his need, perhaps.
The elephant in the room, that visits many more tracks than just Darlington, is the advantage the car in first has over the rest of the field at this egg-shaped darling. If you have the time, watch last year’s race (well actually if you a good four hours to burn) and you can see for yourself how easily last year’s pole sitter (Kevin Harvick) is able to roll off the corner on the bottom groove and out to the lead over Martin Truex Junior. Within just eight laps, Harvick had a full second lead over Truex and took full advantage of the clean air in front of him. By lap twelve, Harvick was already lapping backmarkers. After a lap 18 caution for a wreck between Trevor Bayne and AJ Allmendinger, Harvick loses his lead on pit road due to a jack issue and Kyle Busch is first off the pits. However, Busch chooses the low groove and gives the preferred groove to top-groove master Kyle Larson and you can guess who runs off with the lead into turn one. Within just four laps, Larson stretches his lead to nearly two seconds and runs off with the lead to some four seconds over Martin Truex Junior.
This rinse cycle repeats later as Wrecky Spinhouse brings out another caution. Larson enters and leaves the pits with the lead, jumps out to the front with the green flag, and stays out front grabbing a four-second lead over Kevin Harvick some twenty laps later. Larson continues to maintain a sizable lead until the end of the first segment at lap 100. The lesson in all of this: whoever jumps out to the lead off of green flag starts will grab a momentous advantage, jump out front, and not get passed. The only equalizer will be tire fall off late into a green flag run, the very thing that helped Truex pull in Larson and eventually takes the lead at the line. Alas, Truex loses the lead on pit road back to Larson who once again jumps out to a big lead on the restart.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
In the end, how does this translate towards roster construction for Sunday night? First, if last year’s trends continue into this year then we’re staring at a minimum of two hog lineups with an eye towards a third dependent on how qualifying shakes up. In season’s before, the driver who led the most laps led so much of the race it meant they were claiming so much of the pie that your need for a third Hog didn’t exist and in a race like 2014 you could have gotten away with just one “dominator”. Now, with mandatory cautions, the field will continually get pulled back erasing leads and allowing for another driver with a faster pit stop to assume the lead off of pit road. Hog options begin with the pole sitter (graph above) and keep in mind that last year’s numbers would have looked incredibly better if not for Harvick losing the lead off pit road and having to make continual adjustments throughout the race (Harvick’s average running position was 5th). Second, this race is a grind and not just a grind but 500 miles of beating and banging that tests the ability of drivers and crew chiefs to adapt as the afternoon fades into the night. Being able to drive the track, not dancing too close with the Lady in Black, and working your way to the front is essential as eight of the top nine fantasy scores from last year’s race were real life top ten finishes (the only exception being Kyle Larson as a hog finishing in 14th). As far as punt plays, in order to squeeze one or two of the priced up group of Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Kyle Larson, and Martin Truex Junior, they will be viable especially now that Draftkings (and FanDuel as well) continue their crusade of pricing the best options so much higher than the rest of the field you have to squirm to make a lineup you like.
One more thing to add is that this race includes impound after qualifying which could mean pandemonium like we saw at Chicago with multiple teams failing inspection and losing their starting spot. Keep an eye on this as this could dramatically affect point projections should a Kyle Larson or Kevin Harvick start from the rear.
