The mental drain of Darlington is like no other

Yesterday at 06:36 PM

It took one lap around Darlington Raceway for AJ Allmendinger to understand why it had a nickname.

Allmendinger was driving the No. 84 at the time for Red Bull Racing. It didn't take him long to hit the wall, but the team told him that was what he was supposed to do. It's basically a rite of passage, after all, to earn a Darlington stripe. On the next lap, Allmendinger was in the wall again, but again, he was told it was still okay.

"Then, on the fourth lap, I KO'd it, and they were like, okay, that's too much," Allmendinger laughed.

"To be quite honest, I still feel that way when I show up at the place because I still don't really know how to get around it. So, it is definitely unique. I don't know if I'll go the extreme of Kyle Petty (with) filling it up with water and doing a bass fishing tournament out of it. It's definitely a tough racetrack that I'm constantly learning how to drive."

Darlington has two nicknames: The Lady in Black and The Track Too Tough to Tame. The latter is the one often referenced.

At 1.366 miles in length, the track does not race like anywhere else on the schedule. It eats tires, manhandles race cars to where a driver is never comfortable, and doesn't much care for drivers trying to run side-by-side, especially entering a corner.

And although categorized as an oval, it does not look like any other cookie-cutter oval tracks on the schedule. No, Darlington is one-of-a-kind because it's shaped like an egg.

The fastest way around the racetrack is right next to the wall. It's narrow off both sets of corners, but the exit of Turn 2 has a habit of being the place where drivers often find themselves running out of room. Almost like the track reaches out and grabs the car.

"The biggest thing at Darlington is it's easy to bait yourself into a mistake," Alex Bowman said.

"Especially with the old car where if you barely touched anything, you would instantly get a flat tire. It's a little different with this car, but it's certainly easy to lose sight of racing the racetrack, and you get to racing somebody and drive it right into the fence."

There was another variable about the older car that made hitting the wall at Darlington less than ideal.

"You'd knock the crush panels out of them, and then you'd be gassing yourself the whole race," Michael McDowell said. "That was the worst part: you were going to hit the wall at some point, there was no doubt about it, and when you knocked the crush panels out, all night long you're breathing those fumes, and you're feeling it afterwards."

McDowell had a similar experience to Allmendinger when running his first race at Darlington. It took him no time at all to realize how tough the racetrack was on a driver.

"It was just the level of concentration you needed," he said. "I'm more comfortable and confident in the race cars now than I was 18 years ago (but) you're just so tense that first race there and even that first year. You're just so tense in the car. You don't breathe. You don't relax. You don't let go of the steering wheel. So, everything was magnified those first few races."

It doesn't take much to make a mistake at Darlington, and whether a driver is a rookie or a veteran, it isn't uncommon to hear a radio message at least once during the race about racing the racetrack and not the other drivers. The track, in this case, is the ultimate competitor.

"It is a tough place," Ryan Blaney said. "I think it's one of the toughest places we go, more mentally than anything for me. How do you stay in it for that long? I feel like the mental mush that your brain is in after leaving that race is pretty high because your concentration level is at 110 percent the whole time. At some places, you can get in these zones of like a relaxation mode to an extent of getting in your flow and doing things … but I feel like every lap (at Darlington) is just a battle to try to find speed and not find the fence.

"I relate it to Homestead in a way, but Homestead is a lot wider. You have more room for error unless you're pinned on the fence, but Darlington, it just sneaks up at you more. There's less room to work, so I think that's what makes that place so difficult and the two ends being vastly different is definitely a challenge."

Allmendinger never lets himself relax when racing at Darlington because there is too much going on. He is envious of drivers like Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson, who he says make it look so easy.

The mental exhaustion that comes after competing at Darlington is a major reason the track is so unique. Sure, other races can wear a driver out, but Darlington seems to take it to another level. There might be no other race where mental exhaustion is mentioned as much as it is after competing at Darlington.

"Because you're running up against the wall, the car is changing every lap, and you have to push to go fast, but you have to manage your tires at the same time," Joey Logano said. "There is a lot going on at that place. So, Darlington is tough. The Track Too Tough to Tame. It earns its name."

Sunday afternoon will be 400 miles around Darlington Raceway, as the spring race has traditionally been. But in the fall, it's 500 miles for the Southern 500. The Southern 500, also a crown jewel race, and some consider it the most challenging race on the schedule.

Tyler Reddick had the most mentally exhausting race of his career in last year's Southern 500. It didn't help that Reddick already wasn't feeling well when he got behind the wheel, and he was also trying to win the regular-season championship. After gutting it out, Reddick prevailed over Kyle Larson by one point for the regular season championship – and the 15 bonus points he needed during the early postseason rounds.

If a race at Darlington is like no other, it is no surprise that the recovery period is the same.

"When you wake up on Monday and you're mentally drained like that, what do you do to get your brain back?" Reddick said. "In those cases, I think the drive home helps. When you drive to Darlington (from Charlotte), you have that two-and-a-half (hour) or whatever it is driving home to unwind, so when you do get to the house, it doesn't feel like you have to do much. You're pretty much ready to go to bed when you get home. I think that works out really well in that case with that race."