For the NASCAR Cup Series, Darlington Raceway is the beginning of the 2022 playoffs. That sheer fact often means that the mentality around covering the races begins to change, and that change is not necessary for the better.
When coverage began from Darlington on Sunday (Sept. 4), there was a heavy focus on the playoff contenders. All of the pre-race interviews were with playoff drivers and a significant amount of time was spent talking about who was going to be in the Championship 4 and waltzing out of Phoenix with the title. That’s two months away from now.
That situation is one of the things that is wrong with having a playoff scenario. It becomes the only thing that matters. Even the race itself doesn’t matter. Instead, it becomes simply a means to an end. It’s why I preferred the Southern 500 to not be part of the playoffs.
There was really not all that much of a preview for the race itself. They did infer that someone like Martin Truex Jr. could possibly rain on the parade of playoff drivers in the race, though. Sure enough, he was right up there in contention until his car threw a belt.
There wasn’t a word about Erik Jones the whole pre-race show, despite his excellent track record at Darlington. It was a pretty bad move, especially in hindsight. Darlington is Jones’ fifth-best track on the Cup calendar, behind World Wide Technology Raceway (only one race), Kentucky Speedway (no longer on the schedule), Auto Club Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway with an average finish (after Sunday night) of 10.7.
In all seriousness, Jones being up front at all seemed to come out of nowhere. He was decent during the race, but nothing really special. What happened was that the Petty GMS Racing team decided that Jones should run a little longer under green. Then, Kevin Harvick’s car burst into flames and brought the yellow out in a middle of green-flag pit stops.
The race itself showed off a number of relatively recent issues and rule changes that have come about with the Next Gen. The first of these was the crash that took Chase Elliott out of the race.
Ahead of Darlington, NASCAR updated the Damaged Vehicle Policy to allow for up to 10 minutes for repairs on pit road after wrecks. Elliott needed every bit of that and more after that crash.
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