Southern 500 Sunday at Darlington: Denny Hamlin's Best Shot Yet and Chase Briscoe's Shot at History

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Race Preview - where we skip the numbers and talk about the stories you will actually be arguing about Sunday night.

The Short Version

The Cook Out Southern 500 goes green Sunday, September 6 at 5:00 PM ET on USA. It is 367 laps around Darlington Raceway, and it is the first race of NASCAR's new 10-race Chase. Here is the single biggest reason to tune in: Denny Hamlin is the top seed, he has more Cup wins than anyone who has never won a championship, and the format finally rewards the thing he is best at.

The Chase Is Back, and Nobody Knows How It Races

Start here, because everything else on Sunday hangs off it. NASCAR scrapped the elimination playoffs and brought back the Chase for 2026. Sixteen drivers, ten races, no rounds, no cutlines, no getting knocked out. The points got reset once after Daytona, and the driver with the most points after Homestead in November is the champion. That is it.

Drivers seem to like it. Christopher Bell put it about as plainly as you can: "This seems more like racing, where the previous format was more like a game." Hamlin called it a "giant leap forward in crowning a champion" and said he thinks every driver would tell you it is a more fair way to do it.

Here is the catch nobody can answer yet. For twelve years, drivers knew exactly how to play the playoffs. Win and you move on. Now there is no bailout. A bad night at Darlington does not end your season, but it also cannot be erased by a win three weeks later. Nobody in that garage has raced this format in a Cup car. Sunday is the first real look at how they handle it.

Denny Hamlin Has Run Out of Excuses

Hamlin is 45. He has more than 60 Cup wins. He won the regular season title this year with four wins and a series-leading 880 laps led. He finished runner-up in the standings in 2010 and again last year. He has never won a championship, and he holds the record for most wins without one.

Darlington is his place. Five wins here, most among active drivers, and an 8.0 average finish across 28 starts that is the best anyone has ever managed at this track. So the top seed opens the Chase at his best track, in a format built around consistency, in what a lot of fans think is the last window where his equipment and his age line up.

He knows it. "The bigger body of work typically bodes well for Denny Hamlin," he said. "It just always has." Fans boo him every week. Sunday is the start of the run that decides whether they ever have to stop.

The Other Drivers Worth Watching, and Why

Chase Briscoe has won the last two Southern 500s, and he did it with two different teams. Nobody has won three in a row here since Jeff Gordon, who ripped off four straight from 1995 through 1998. Briscoe is not shy about how much this one means to him. He called Darlington the top of the list of his favorite tracks, then added the part every fan already knows: "Darlington can be a chaotic race."

Tyler Reddick starts on the pole, though he did not earn it on the stopwatch. Qualifying got rained out Saturday, so NASCAR set the field with its formula, which weighs owner standings and last week's finish. Reddick will take it. He leads the series with five wins and he already beat this track once this year, winning the Goodyear 400 back in March.

Ryan Preece is the reason people are still arguing about the format. He came to Daytona 31 points out of the last Chase spot with no career Cup wins. He left it a winner in overtime, in the RFK No. 60, and 17 points inside the cut. That kind of week does not happen twice, and now he gets ten races to see what he can do with it.

Carson Hocevar is the guy your group chat brings up every Sunday. He got his first career win at Talladega, then raced himself from fifth to twelfth in the standings because he does not know how to lift. Darlington punishes exactly that. Watch him anyway.

Kyle Larson has led more laps at Darlington than any active driver and won the 2023 Southern 500, but he has not been to victory lane since May of last year. If there is one track where that ends, this is a fair guess.

What Actually Decides This Thing

Tires. That is the short answer. Darlington's surface eats rubber, and Goodyear brought 15 sets for this race. Cars that are fast on lap five are often loose and sliding by lap thirty, so the winning car is usually the one that is still driveable at the end of a long green-flag run. Crew chiefs have to guess whether to short-pit for track position or ride it out.

Then there is the sun. A 5:00 PM start means the sun drops down the backstretch and straight into the drivers' eyes coming into Turn 3 right as the race gets serious. Add pit road, where the entry and exit here have spun more good runs than most people remember.

And weather is live. The forecast calls for scattered showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon with about a 50 percent chance of rain and a high near 88. A rain delay at a track this hard on tires would scramble strategy completely.

One more thing worth knowing. Darlington runs the low-downforce short-track package now, with more horsepower and less grip than the kit it used to get. More sliding, more mistakes, more Darlington Stripes on the right rear.

The Argument You Are Going to Have Sunday

Shane van Gisbergen won twice this year, at Watkins Glen and Sonoma. He is not in the Chase. He came to Daytona with a 31-point cushion, finished 27th, and got bumped by 17 points when Preece won. Under the old win-and-in rules he would have been locked in months ago.

So which is it. Does a points-only Chase crown a more legitimate champion, or does a format that leaves a two-time winner home in September have a hole in it? SVG did not whine about it. "One night doesn't sum up our year," he said. "I guess we haven't been good enough." Your group chat will not be that gracious.

The Bottom Line

Ten races decide this championship, and the first one is at the track that has ruined more good seasons than any other on the schedule. Hamlin has waited twenty years for a format like this. Briscoe has a chance to do something no driver has done here since Jeff Gordon. Somebody is going to hit the wall Sunday and lose the title in September. That is why you watch.

Pick your guy before the green flag. Here is what we have in stock for the drivers in this one:

• Chase Briscoe #14 Southern 500 at Darlington Win T-Shirt - the shirt from the first one of the streak.
• Denny Hamlin #11 Darlington Win T-Shirt
• Tyler Reddick #8 Trucker Mesh Hat
• Chase Briscoe #19 2026 Chicagoland Winner T-Shirt
• Ty Gibbs #54 2026 Iowa Corn 350 Winner T-Shirt

Not seeing your driver? Everything new lands here first, and if you want the win shirt without watching for the drop, the win-shirt fan club ships it to you.