Tonight the NASCAR Cup Series makes its second trip of the 2025 season to Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. After a year as the regular season finale, Darlington, aka Lady in Black aka The Track Too Tough to Tame, returns to its position as the first race of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
Darlington is. 1.366-mile egg-shaped oval. At some point tonight the broadcast will surely talk about the reason for this unique shape being a requirement to preserve a minnow pond at the end of the track where turns 3 and 4 now sit. Today the minnow pond is long gone. However, the unusual layout, making it nearly impossible to properly balance a car for both ends of the track, remains.
Darlington is an extremely high tire wear track. Teams will look to take fresh tires often as they work to keep grip on the 25 degree banking in turns 1/2 and 23 degree banking in turns 3/4. As drivers head down the 6 degree straightaways they will look to work the wall to maintain speed. Inevitable this will mean drivers scrape the wall, earning a “Darlington stripe.”
The odds of winning or finishing well at all, without a stripe are almost 0, so drivers have to manage running on the wall without running into it so hard they damage the car. Drivers like Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick have made a name for themselves “ripping the high line” but have also had their fair share of incidents as a result of their aggressive lines.
Now that I’ve exhausted all stock Darlington terms, let’s turn to my favorite bet still on the board for tonight’s race.
Ty Gibbs has had a season to forget. All three of his teammates won races in the regular season and are well positioned in the playoffs. Gibbs on the other hand remains winless in his 113 Cup starts and missed the playoffs by over 100 points.
Despite his overall poor performance, there have been some bright spots. Over the summer he won the in season tournament. Another one of those bright spots was here at Darlington in the spring where he finished ninth.
In his full time Cup Series career at Darlington Gibbs has finished Top 10 in two of his five starts. That includes a second place finish last spring and the aforementioned ninth place this spring. So he can clearly work his way around the track.
Yesterday in qualifying Gibbs put down the 2nd best 20 lap average. Although he was in practice group 1, which gave him an overall advantage in speed, even when his speeds were balanced out in the Win The Race practice model he still had top 5 long run speed.
The Win The Race simulations have Ty Gibbs finishing inside the Top 10 in 42.93% of of 20,000 simulations. That translates to fair odds of +133. So at +225 we are getting tons of value against our simulations.
Ty Gibbs is in his third full time season in the Cup Series. He is the only JGR driver over that time who hasn’t won at least one race. Driving for his grandfather’s team Gibbs has one of, if not the longest leash in the Cup Series. Sodiapite his poor performance compared to his teammates, he isn’t getting the boot anytime soon. Still, after dominating the Xfinity Series, capped off with winning the Championship in 2022, he has to be feeling pressure to win. Given his history at Darlington, his speed in practice yesterday, and the overall pressure to win, I don’t hate a sprinkle on Gibbs to finish Top 5, Top 3, to win, or to be Top Toyota if you can find numbers that are favorable against his simulation odds.
