NASCAR DFS: Cookout Southern 500 Track Breakdown

Playoffs?! Playoffs?! That’s right we’re talking playoffs for the Cup series this weekend. The Cookout Southern 500 is kicking off the chase for the title this year on Sunday evening with a second trip to Darlington this year with the Crown Jewel race. This is one of the more unique tracks on the schedule with its egg shape and 1.336-mile distance and two different sets of corners.

Tire Notes:

The tires used here this week have been used at Darlington for all three series since 2020 and for Cup and Xfinity since 2019 and they’re the same tire codes that have been used at Homestead for the last three seasons as well. They are designed to give up wear a tad quicker and rubber up the track to create multiple grooves of racing.

Strategy Notes:

The race won’t have practice and the qualifying order was set via the formula so we can expect a comp caution early in Stage 1 on Sunday which is something to think about for the start of the race in terms of laps led and how it could shuffle the front runners early on. In the last few races here, we’ve seen more than one driver lead 100 or more laps just once, last year’s Fall race, so building for single dominators is usually the way to maximize the points and then shooting for a driver who also leads 50 or more laps works too, since there’s been an average of nearly two drivers a race to lead 50 or more laps in the last five races here.

Facts To Know:

• Only four drivers in the field this week have an average Driver Rating of over 100 in the last five races here, one being Kyle Larson who’s only raced in two of the last five.
• There are only two drivers in the field with at least four top-10s in the last five races.
• This is a track where you can move up as 48-percent of the top-10 finishers in the last five races have started outside the top-12 starting spots.
• Since 2013, starting spots between P30 and P37 have seen five spots average seven or more spots of PD per race.
• Between the pole-sitter and the outside pole-sitter, an average of 148.2 laps have been led by those two spots combined per race since 2013.
• Three Toyotas and two Fords have won the last five races.
• The average starting spot of the winner in the last five races has been just under 10.0 with two winners having started P15 and P16.

The table below shows the number of drivers to reach each stat-type over the last five races similar races with Race 1 being the most recent.

For the tables below:

* The Category Rankings table: The numbers in the tables for each column represent that driver's rank amongst the other in the field for that particular stat. They are ranked with 1 being the best in each column.

* The DFS Scoring Table: Race 1 is the most recent race in the sample size with Race 5 being the earliest. We are using the Last 5 Darlington races for the data.