NASCAR Cup Series

Smith worked hard for Darlington win

Published May. 9, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

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Larry McReynolds

Winning at Darlington Raceway is a challenge.

Take, for example, three of our past champions — Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth. Combined, their win total in NASCAR Sprint Cup is 80 wins. None of those three drivers, however, has ever been able to close the deal and win at Darlington.

Look how many guys got up there Saturday night and dominated the race but couldn’t win. It’s an ever-changing race because of the length and, as we always tell you, the toughness of the track. The track changes, the strategy changes, cautions fall when you least expect them.

That’s what is so special about Regan Smith winning Saturday night at Darlington.

I guarantee you, and this is no slight to him, that if you picked your top-10 candidates to win the race, Regan wouldn’t make the list. You just wouldn’t think twice about him. I mean here’s a kid who never even has had a top-five finish but shows up at Darlington, keeps his nose clean and wins the race.

Now he joins the very elite ranks of Darlington Southern 500 winners. It was an incredible accomplishment.

Anytime you win a race at the Sprint Cup Series level that isn’t won on fuel mileage or because you were leading when rain canceled the rest of the race, when you do it the way Regan did it Saturday night, it is very rewarding.

So that little voice in the back of his head that kept asking “Can you win a Cup race?” has finally been answered. Of course now that little voice will start again with “OK, you won one, but can you win a second one?”

There are a handful of races that you can win on this level that literally are a career-changing experience. Darlington's Southern 500 is definitely one of those. That list also includes, naturally, the Daytona 500, but also the Coca-Cola 600 and the Brickyard 400.

The other benefit is it puts Regan in the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race in Charlotte, N.C., in two weeks. Additionally, because he won this year, he is also automatically qualified for the all-star race next year. So that means Regan is now guaranteed a start in two races that pay a cool $1 million each to win.

So the benefits are endless when you win a NASCAR Sprint Cup race.

As a crew chief, I was fortunate to win two Daytona 500s and the all-star race, but there definitely is a little bit of a void in my career because I never won a race at Darlington. I did come close so many times but never was able to finish it off.

Now, think about what this says about Regan’s team. These guys aren’t in Charlotte, which we all know is the hub of NASCAR. This team is based in Denver. This group has done a really great job of striking alliances with Richard Childress Racing and also securing Earnhardt-Childress engines. The team also went through a lot of changes during the winter months with the crew chief and key personnel.

It also didn’t get greedy. The group didn’t try to expand to two teams. They had a plan with this team and now it has paid off.

I felt bad that the owner, Barney Visser, wasn’t at Darlington on Saturday night. I also felt really bad for Regan since it was Mother’s Day weekend and his mom wasn’t there. She was down in Alabama helping to rescue animals that were also affected by all the tornado damage.

Talk about a feel-good story about a great family, though. Regan started racing go-karts at age 4. As a family, they decided in 1995 to move to the Charlotte/Mooresville, N.C., area to try to advance Regan’s career.

They ran him in anything they could. He won Rookie of the Year in 2008.

Now he is the winner of one of our most prestigious races at one of our most historic tracks, Darlington Raceway.
 

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