NASCAR At Darlington Raceway 2012: Jimmie Johnson Takes Southern 500

Whether you want to call it bad luck or simple misfortune, Jeff Gordon has had more than his fair share of it in 2012, and the bad news for him is he suffered more of it during the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.

Running solidly in the top 10 on lap 194, slight contact with Denny Hamlin resulted in a cut left-rear tire for Gordon. As he came down pit road, the yellow flag waved for the debris he had left behind on the track – but in a development typical of how his season has gone, NASCAR threw the caution just as Gordon hit pit road (thus he ended up a lap down).

Matt Kenseth is now just two points behind Roush Fenway Racing teammate Greg Biffle following a sixth-place finish at Saturday night’s NASCAR race at Darlington Raceway.

But another Roush driver made the biggest news when it comes to a Chase spot: Carl Edwards jumped into the top 10 and Clint Bowyer fell out.

Danica Patrick’s second career Sprint Cup Series start was as uneventful as she hoped it would be, and the driver accomplished what she set out to do – stay out of trouble and finish Saturday night’s NASCAR race at Darlington Raceway with her car in one piece.

“I know I didn’t have a great result,” Patrick said. “But I accomplished all the things I wanted to accomplish. Things went good on the Nationwide side. Here on the Cup side, my goals were to be respectable out there. I think I held my own alright. And the other one was to finish, and both of those things happened.

Finally!

After months of frustration, Jimmie Johnson gave Rick Hendrick his 200th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory, running away from the rest of the field on a green-white-checkered-flag restart that took the Bojangles’ Southern 500 one lap past its scheduled distance.

On Saturday night at Darlington Raceway, Johnson ended his own winless streak of 16 races, a drought of relative epic proportions for the five-time champion. The victory was Johnson’s 56th, breaking a tie with Rusty Wallace for eighth on the all-time list.

Several of Ryan Newman’s crewmen confronted Kurt Busch on Saturday night at Darlington Raceway following an ill-advised decision by Busch to do a burnout through Newman’s pit box.

After Busch had a flat tire and crashed with six laps remaining – an incident which also collected Newman – the Phoenix Racing driver lost his cool and began yelling on the team radio.

Jimmie Johnson had a sizable late lead cut down by a caution and a green-white-checkered finish, but was still able to outlast the other frontrunners on Saturday night to win the Southern 500 at Darlington. The victory is Johnson’s first NASCAR Sprint Cup win of the year.

Johnson took the lead on Lap 324 and never relinquished it, holding on through the final lap of the race on Lap 368. Fuel was a concern for everyone at the end of the race, but Johnson managed his fuel situation well and had no problem out-pacing Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin for the victory. A crash involving Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman brought out a yellow flag on Lap 361, eliminating the advantage that Johnson had built up, but he opened it up again on the restart.

On the way home from Darlington Raceway on Friday night, I was listening to Claire B. Lang’s show on Sirius/XM’s NASCAR channel. A man called in and praised Danica Patrick’s performance in the Nationwide Series race – and deservedly so.

But when Lang asked him to predict how the No. 10 car would fare in tonight’s Southern 500, the guy said he could see Patrick finishing in the top 10!

Weather will be tame for the track that’s “Too Tough To Tame” at Darlington Raceway, as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races under the lights Saturday in the Bojangles’ Southern 500.

High pressure dominates the weather. It will start off mostly sunny. A few more clouds are possible by evening, but it will remain dry. Temperatures will be pleasantly warm in the afternoon as the high temperature gets near 80. Winds will be relatively light and the humidity will be comfortable.

It’s NASCAR race night at Darlington Raceway, and we’ve got the actual race start time, the starting lineup and some other facts about Saturday’s Southern 500 for you below.

What time does the race start? Typically, NASCAR night races in the Sprint Cup Series start at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. But in an effort to get fans home earlier, Darlington is starting Saturday’s race shortly after 7 p.m. – 30 minutes sooner than usual. The mothers of several Cup drivers are the grand marshals, and they’ll give the command to fire engines at 7:08 p.m EDT. The race itself is scheduled to begin at 7:16 p.m EDT.

Joey Logano expressed remorse for unintentionally spinning Elliott Sadler toward the end of Friday night’s Nationwide Series race at Darlington Raceway, saying the incident made his victory “bittersweet.”

With five laps to go, Logano lined up third behind race leader Sadler, who was on two older tires. When Sadler slightly spun his tires, Logano’s shove got him out of shape and the No. 2 car spun and crashed.

Greg Biffle once went three years without a NASCAR pole position. But since he broke the pole-less streak, he’s certainly making up for last time.

Biffle won the pole for Saturday night’s Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, and he’ll lead the starting lineup for the second time this season and the fifth time since last August.

As Travis Pastrana walked into the media center at Darlington Raceway, reporters noticed something missing: His mullet.

The NASCAR-themed hair style he’d been growing out for some time and promised he wouldn’t cut until he won his first race was no more. And he hadn’t won a race, either.

Jimmie Johnson had some interesting comments about gaining respect in NASCAR on Friday at Darlington Raceway, so we’re passing them along here:

Eric McClure walked gingerly into the Darlington Raceway media center on Friday morning, though he seemed fortunate to even be walking at all.

After his vicious wreck in the Nationwide Series race at Talladega Superspeedway last week – which knocked him out and left him with some painful internal bruising – McClure said he felt grateful to have escaped the crash without further damage.

While Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t go as far to agree with everything Tony Stewart said in his post-Talladega interview, the driver did acknowledge the racing at Talladega wasn’t what it could have been.

But as he stated, that was in part because his car wasn’t to his liking, which prevented him from racing the way he would have preferred.

As you probably know, most NASCAR Sprint Cup Series night races begin at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time.

That’s part of NASCAR’s initiative to standardize start times – 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. – so fans are more familiar with when to tune in and watch.

As NASCAR drivers tackle the track that’s “Too Tough To Tame” at Darlington Raceway, they won’t be worrying about Mother Nature.

After weeks of dodging rain drops, high winds and chilly temperatures, there’s finally a race weekend where the attention is on the track and not the radar or the sky.