Information By: MIKE ARNING / STEWART-HAAS RACING – KANNAPOLIS, NC
NOAH GRAGSON
Darlington Advance
No. 10 Bass Pro Shops/Winchester Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Event Overview
● Event: Cook Out Southern 500 (Round 26 of 36)
● Time/Date: 6 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Sept. 1
● Location: Darlington (S.C.) Raceway
● Layout: 1.366-mile oval
● Laps/Miles: 367 laps/501.32 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 115 laps / Stage 2: 115 laps / Final Stage: 137 laps
● TV/Radio: USA / MRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Notes of Interest
● The Cook Out Southern 500 will mark Noah Gragson’s third career NASCAR Cup Series start at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway, but his first in the Southern 500. Both of Gragson’s previous Cup Series starts at the 1.366-mile oval have come in May during the Goodyear 400. Gragson finished 26th in last year’s Goodyear 400 and improved on that number this year when he finished 14th.
● Gragson’s lack of NASCAR Cup Series experience at Darlington does not mean he’s lacking experience at the egg-shaped oval. In fact, Gragson has seven NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at the “Track Too Tough To Tame,” and he seemed to tame Darlington by scoring an average finish of fourth. His worst finish was eighth, and in his last three Xfinity Series starts at Darlington, Gragson scored two wins and earned one second-place finish. The Las Vegas native has a 100 percent lap-completion rate at Darlington and he led a total of 253 laps, nearly 25 percent of the 1,035 laps available.
● Gragson’s first NASCAR Xfinity Series victory at Darlington came on Sept. 4, 2021, when he started eighth and led five times for 40 laps, including the final 10, to take the win by .219 of a second over runner-up Harrison Burton.
● Gragson’s second NASCAR Xfinity Series win at Darlington came in his final Xfinity Series start at the track on Sept. 3, 2022. He started second and took the lead on the fourth lap of the 147-lap race. He wound up leading four times for a race-high 82 laps, winning with a .794-of-a-second advantage over his nearest pursuer, Sheldon Creed.
● Gragson will make his eighth career NASCAR Xfinity Series start at Darlington on Saturday. The 25-year-old will pull double duty this Labor Day weekend by driving the No. 30 Ford Mustang for Rette-Jones Racing in the Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help a Hero 200 before piloting his signature No. 10 Bass Pro Shops/Winchester Ford Mustang Dark Horse in Sunday’s Southern 500. It will be Gragson’s fourth Xfinity Series start of the year and he will be going for a fourth straight top-10. Gragson wheeled a Rette-Jones Racing-prepared Mustang to a 10th-place finish May 25 at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway, a fifth-place result June 29 at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway, and a sixth-place effort Aug. 17 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn.
Noah Gragson, Driver of the No. 10 Bass Pro Shops/Winchester Ford Mustang Dark Horse
How do you feel about Darlington serving as the regular-season finale and the last chance for drivers to earn a playoff berth?
“It’s a fun, challenging racetrack, especially with the Southern 500. It’s a long race. It wears you out emotionally and mentally, and you’ve got to stay focused for 500 miles around that track. It’s a tough place. I personally enjoy that track a ton. It’s a lot of fun, and I’m super excited for it.”
You’ve said that you feel like Darlington is one of your better tracks. Why?
“I just feel like I know every bump and crack around that track. If my car’s driving one way, I can move around the track and help my car’s balance just by switching up my line. I just have a really good understanding of, if I position my car one way or another, how it’s going to affect the balance of it.”
You finished a respectable 14th in your first visit to Darlington earlier this year. How did that race unfold for you and are there any takeaways from it that you can apply to your return trip to Darlington this Labor Day weekend?
“We just kind of struggled the whole weekend getting the car where we wanted, and then I hit the wall in qualifying in turn one trying something that I normally wouldn’t do. Going back there, I’m taking the approach that I’m just going to drive that track the way I want to drive it. It was earlier in the season and we were still trying to figure each other out between me and my crew chief. I think we’ve gotten to a good place now where I feel like we can have some more success there.”
The Southern 500 is 100 miles longer (74 additional laps) than your first race at Darlington was back in May. Is a race at Darlington akin to the Coca-Cola 600, where it’s a test of stamina as much of a test of skill?
“The Southern 500 will definitely mentally drain you and you have to stay focused. It’s a long one, so you’ve got to focus in, and you’re thinking and using your full potential, from the green flag to the checkered. It’s a tough track to get around by yourself in practice, and then when you get out there with other racecars trying to pass them and stuff, you’re definitely draining your mental capacity battery pretty quick.”
Darlington is known as the track “Too Tough To Tame.” When you went there for your first and only NASCAR Cup Series start last year, did it live up to its billing?
“I feel like I really had a good handle on Darlington when I raced in Xfinity – I’ve won a couple of Xfinity races there. We didn’t really have great speed in the Cup car there last year, which was disappointing because I had higher hopes. It’s a track that gives you different options. You can run the bottom, you can run the top, and the (two ends of the track) are shaped differently. I think the biggest part is just not overdoing it and getting into the wall, but I like running right up against that wall, so it comes a little bit more naturally to me.”
In the NASCAR Xfinity Series, you got along with the “Lady in Black.” Seven career starts and seven top-10 finishes, with two wins, including your last Xfinity Series start there. You had command of Darlington in the Xfinity Series. How?
“I just loved running the top at Darlington. There are only a handful of guys who can really run the top efficiently, building up that precision and accuracy, and it takes a lot of focus to run up there. Just getting comfortable doing it at all the tracks – Vegas, Homestead, Kansas, Darlington – those are all places where you run the wall. So all those tracks are really good practice on how to get comfortable and how to run it, and I feel like I’m one of the better guys at running the wall. We had really good runs there, and if we didn’t finish first, we were always second, third, fourth – we always had a shot to win, and we led a lot of laps there. It’s one of my favorite tracks, for sure.”
How much can you rip the wall at Darlington before you rip your car into pieces?
“You don’t want to hit the wall. You want to be as close as you can get, but you don’t want to hit the wall. I actually don’t even go up to the top lane in (turns) one and two. You see a lot of guys drive the bottom of the racetrack on entry, slide up in the center and then turn back down. I kind of just run the middle of the corner through there. I’ve just never gotten a good handle on doing that diamond in (turns) one and two. But (turns) three and four, I’m pretty committed to the fence. Just being smart and not overdoing it. Obviously, the tires wear out and that’s where you see guys bite themselves. They start to get comfortable up there and they gain their confidence by running the wall, but their tires are also wearing out. You think, ‘Man, I could push it just a little more because I have a little more confidence, I’ve worked up to it,’ but you also have less grip, so that’s where you see that place bite you.”
You’re in a NextGen car. You wear a full-face, state-of-the-art helmet, combined with a state-of-the-art firesuit and shoes, and a six-way seatbelt system keeps you secure in a custom-molded seat. Do you ever wonder how a guy like Richard Petty ran 500 miles at Darlington in overalls and whatever helmet he could find, in a car not far removed from what was on the dealership floor?
“That’s all they knew back then. It sounds crazy for us now, but back in the day they still ran it how they ran it because that’s all they knew, right? You know, 20 years from now, we’re going to be looking at today and saying, ‘I can’t believe those guys in 2024 were doing stuff like this. It’s nuts.’ Stuff evolves and you grow and you learn more.”