What Happened?
Not only did Tyler Reddick sit on the pole at Darlington Raceway for Sunday’s (March 22) Goodyear 400, he also cruised to victory by a healthy margin of 5.847 seconds. It was no Sunday afternoon drive for Reddick, however, who battled electrical issues, lengthy pit road stays, and was even captured trying to get water out of his not-so-cool suit.
Tyler Reddick's cool suit isn't working. pic.twitter.com/8nVJhpgKyc
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) March 22, 2026
An offset pit strategy put Reddick in position to blast through the field, and he passed Brad Keselowski on the final run en route to his fourth victory of the young 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season.
While Keselowski finished second, Ryan Blaney capped off a solid day in third. Carson Hocevar drove his way from the back to fourth at the checkered flag, and Austin Cindric collected his career-best Darlington finish of fifth, which is also his best finish of the year so far.
What Really Happened?
We started with a pinch of tire falloff. Next, we added a dash of extra horsepower. Mix that all in with a points format that rewards consistency over chaos, and we’re starting to put the racing back in the hands of these Cup Series drivers.
It’s beginning to make the ingredients for a great race car as well.
On the surface, this Darlington race may not have lived up to the hype that things were going to be extremely out of control, as some drivers had hinted at pre-race. If you watched Sunday’s race, however, you saw a great afternoon of pure racing.
Tyler Reddick Wins at Darlington For His 4th of the Season
Tire falloff, offset pit stops, and long green-flag runs tested drivers who were able to make moves to race and pass one another.
Too often in this Next Gen era of racing, the cars put on a façade of close racing when in reality, drivers are stuck in dirty air and unable to get too close, all because of the shortfalls of this car.
In the early days of the Gen 7, the majority of the intermediate tracks received praise. Darlington, however, was an outlier. Dirty air and the narrow track prevented Denny Hamlin from passing Erik Jones in 2022. It kept Reddick stuck behind Kyle Larson in 2023, and a fast Kyle Busch couldn’t get around Chase Briscoe in 2024.
In today’s race, dirty air still played a role. You could see some cars lose the nose and get tight when running behind another driver. That little bit of extra horsepower, however, made an impact on off-throttle time on corner entry, which allowed drivers to pull alongside each other and get to racing, rather than staying stuck a third of a second behind.
There's a new leader!
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) March 22, 2026
It's @TylerReddick! pic.twitter.com/8aD8y1Ue3R
As is par for the course, some fans have taken to social media to complain about the race being boring. Then again, that happens after just about any race.
Darlington’s 400 miles might have had a spread out field, but that was caused by the extra horsepower and tire falloff, which I thought was supposed to be a good thing in the eyes of many of the same race fans.
The current options are less horsepower with cars running close together and little passing, or more horsepower with spread out fields and more passing.
What people have been clamoring for over the last few years is more passing, even if it means the field gets a little more spread out. It puts the cars more on-edge and the racing into the hands of the drivers, and it ultimately helps cut down on late-race chaos caused by the desperation of 36 drivers who know they won’t be able to pass each other.
Much has been made about the current Cup product and the way the car produces close racing with little passing. I myself have had my doubts, and I still think the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series consistently puts on a better product than the Cup Series.
We’ve already seen the way extreme tire wear and added horsepower has had a positive effect on racing at short tracks and road courses. Putting more horsepower into these cars at Darlington hopefully will give a green light to NASCAR to keep upping the dosage at other tracks as well.
The only way I would improve this race is by removing stage cautions, but I’ll leave that to another article on another day.
Paint Scheme of the Race
The Goodyear 400, otherwise known as Darlington’s spring race, has become synonymous with throwback weekend. This year, however, NASCAR moved away from the concerted effort to push a throwback theme. That left it up to the teams to choose whether or not to run a throwback scheme.
The majority of the field opted to drive their typical paint schemes with their sponsors’ normal colors. The outliers were RFK Racing, running paint schemes to pay tribute to the late Greg Biffle. The three RFK Racing cars gave a great drive to honor the former driver of the No. 16.
The paint scheme of the race, however, has to go to Hocevar and his Chili’s throwback to Dale Earnhardt.
He's one tough customer.@CarsonHocevar is doing it for Dale this weekend. pic.twitter.com/RLRubqKZi9
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) March 21, 2026
Yeah sure, maybe it’s cliché to give the award to the guy who runs a throwback to one of the sport’s most legendary drivers. I could try to explain why this throwback was so neat, but I’ll let Dale Jr. do that instead.
“This is my FAVORITE Dale Earnhardt paint scheme” -Dale Jr
— Dirty Mo Media (@DirtyMoMedia) March 17, 2026
Safe to say he approves of Hocevar’s Darlington throwback. 💯 https://t.co/cXVzNIqdXM pic.twitter.com/1upJ5LiMZU
Hocevar gave the Chili’s machine a great drive after starting from the rear. The No. 77 marched up to the front with some slightly fresher tires during the final run. While it would have been neat to see that paint scheme contend for the win, it’s just as good to see Hocevar actually get the finish to showcase his day’s work.
What’s Next?
The extra horsepower is here to stay for a few more weeks, beginning with the Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, March 29.
The 400 laps of racing at The Paperclip will air on Fox Sports 1 with coverage starting at 3:30 p.m. ET.
I enjoyed this one as well. Still planning to skip the cookie cutter tracks as the season goes on, but this was quite a pure race. Driver skill mattered. Tire management mattered. Car setup mattered. Pit crews mattered. And at the end of the day, the fastest team overcame adversity and won the race.
Still think it would have been even better without stage cautions, but we can’t always have everything we want, and if this became the baseline for the average NASCAR race, I think the sport would be in a good place. I’d probably return to watching every race.
On to Martinsville. I hope the new HP package has similar effect there, though I’m not optimistic. Looks like the forecast high temp is around 60, which will likely mean even the HP jump won’t keep the cars from running on rails. Martinsville is at its best when it’s hot and greasy.
Overall a good race. Darlington usually produces a decent race for spectators. Based on the hype voiced before the race, I expected more contact and cautions but it was still interesting from a spectator POV.
Enough already! I have nothing against Reddick but hopefully he doesn’t win for several weeks. If I were NASCAR, I’d feel the need to take one of those 23XI cars back to the research center for a closer inspection.
It definitely seems 23XI has found something to either exploit, or push the envelope of the rules. If so, somebody forgot to tell Riley Herbst’s team about it!
Same as far as Reddick…I have nothing against him, but some fresh winners, hopefully from smaller teams, would be nice.
The odd thing with Reddick and to a lesser extent Wallace is there’s no obvious single advantage they seem to have. They’re fast in a straight line, but they also seem to handle better than most. I would wonder about weight, but Reddick drove away from everyone at the end, so they’d have to be super creative to get the weight back into the car before post race inspection. Aero doesn’t seem to make sense, because that generally should help handling or straight line speed, not both.
I’m going to be nice here and just say that the problem with the #35 team might not be the car.
Yeah, I like Herbst, but it seems he has ascended one level beyond where he should have.
Have to guess Heim will be in that car soon, as he should be.
Maybe Herbst can follow the Allgaier path, and become a mainstay in the O’Reilly series, along with being a super-substitute for Toyota in cup.
I guess we know what MJ got as a settlement for the lawsuit.
The GM engineers seems to have missed the design on there new body design this year. it has created handing and tire problems .
The truck race was fantastic. They seem to have a much better show week after week.