NASCAR At Darlington Raceway: Regan Smith Gets His First Career Win

Regan Smith is a NASCAR Sprint Cup winner.

Driving for a single-car, self-sponsored team based out of Denver, CO., the native of Cato, NY. beat Roush-Fenway Racing driver Carl Edwards to win the Showtime Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway for his first career victory in one of the great upsets in the sport's history.

Brad Keselowski grabbed his first top-five since he won the 2009 spring race at the Talladega Superspeedway with a third-place finish, while front row starters Kasey Kahne - who led a race-high 124 laps - and Ryan Newman rounded out the top-five.

The race's final laps were marred by an incident between Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch. Busch and Harvick had made contact earlier in the lap, sending Harvick's teammate hard into the inside wall. Several yards down the track, Busch hung a left into Harvick's left rear, hooking him into the outside wall. Harvick parked his car in front of Busch's on pit road after the race and got out of his car to confront Busch, who peeled away and pushed Harvick's Chevrolet into the inside pit wall.

Kevin Harvick has never won at the Darlington Raceway, but his No. 29 Chevrolet is out front as the Showtime Southern 500 reaches its final 100 laps. Twice a winner already in 2011, Harvick's victories at Auto Club Speedway of Southern California and Martinsville Speedway were his first at both of those respective venues.

Kasey Kahne, tonight's polesitter, currently runs second with Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, and Carl Edwards rounding out the top-five.

Kyle Busch has still led the most laps on the night, but he has still yet to get back into the top-10 after his loose wheel under green.

Two of the Atlanta-sponsored teams  had issues in short order. UPS-sponsored David Ragan was turned off turn two by Brian Vickers. Ragan clipped Vickers' left side door, shearing it away like a can-opener. After the restart from that yellow, Joey Logano and Marcos Ambrose made contact, sending Logano's Home Depot Toyota into the frontstretch wall. Ragan is still in the race but Logano's machine is behind the wall for repairs.

Jimmie Johnson has spun off turn four to draw the sixth caution in the race and the first in nearly 100 laps at lap 221.

Carl Edwards had grabbed the lead during the green-flag stretch as Kyle Busch was forced to pit road for a loose rear wheel. Busch had led a race-high 78 laps in his pursuit of his second-straight win and a weekend sweep. He had a lead of more than two and a half seconds after the pit stops, but he has now fallen a lap down in 23rd place affter the green flag pit stop.

Johnson's trouble began on lap 83 when he spun off the front bumper of Juan Pablo Montoya, who has been a controversey magnet in recent weeks. The five-time defending series champion avoided contact with the wall, but lost significant track position with flat tires. He was running within the top-15 when he spun this time, but was again able to keep his Chevrolet from sustaining damage.

With 225 laps complete, the top five are Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart, and Jeff Gordon.

Through 100 laps at Darlington, polesitter Kasey Kahne has his No. 4 Toyota in the wind despite a slight brush with the wall. Kyle Busch runs second, followed by Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, and Jamie McMurray.

The headliner of the night, though, has been Juan Pablo Montoya. A week after controversey reared its head as he and Ryan Newman traded blows on the track (and allegedly in the NASCAR hauler on Friday), he has already been involved in two incidents. In the first, he bumped defending five-time series champion Jimmie Johnson into a spin on lap 83. Johnson saved his Chevrolet from impacting the wall and is on his way back through the field.

On the restart from that incident, Montoya pushed Brian Vickers wide, causing Kahne's Team Red Bull teammate to smack the outside wall exiting turn two.

The recent controversey has stirred up memories of Montoya's controversey-filled rookie season of 2007 in which he was involved in various on-track incidents with Sprint Cup veterans. After one, he and Kevin Harvick engaged in what could best be described as a less-than-amicable patty-cake session at Watkins Glen.

Kasey Kahne hasn't won a NASCAR Sprint Cup race since taking the checkered flag at Atlanta Motor Speedway in September 2009. He has the pole for tonight's Showtime Southern 500 and looks for his second-straight top-five finish as he comes off a third-place run last week in Richmond. Kahne has had an up-and-down start to his one-year loan to Team Red Bull, recording four top-10s but also having four finishes of 21st or worse. He currently sits 18th in the standings, 39 points away from 10th-placed Tony Stewart for the last assured spot in the Chase.

Ryan Newman, fresh off the latest chapter in his on-track fued with Juan Pablo Montoya - which allegedly became physical Friday in the NASCAR hauler - starts second. Newman has never won at Darlington, but he had the dominant car in the 2003 Southern 500 before he accidentally hit the ignition killswitch on his Dodge and lost nine laps. Montoya, meanwhile, rolls off 16th. He has one top-five at Darlington but has never led a single lap at the South Carolina track.

Defending Showtime Southern 500 winner Denny Hamlin rolls off third in his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, while Carl Edwards and Jeff Gordon - the active wins leader at The Track Too Tough To Tame with seven - round out the top-five. The front-ten positions are filled out by Richard Petty Motorsports teammates Marcos Ambrose and A.J. Allmendinger, Brian Vickers, Tony Stewart, and Brad Keselowski.

Rolling off from the 11th position is Georgia's own David Ragan. Ragan is on a roll, recording three top-eight finishes in his last four starts. More impressive is the fact that all three are "legitimate" finishes; he crashed at Talladega in the one "wild card" race in that stretch. Ragan, sponsored by Atlanta-based UPS, has climbed to 19th in the standings and sits 44 outside the Chase.

The green flag in tonight's Showtime Southern 500 is less than 45 minutes away, and SB Nation Atlanta, SB Nation's NASCAR hub, and NASCAR Ranting and Raving will have you covered as the cars and stars of the stock car racing tackle The Track Too Tough To Tame. 

This weekend's Showtime Southern 500 (Saturday, 7 p.m. on FOX) marks the 108th race at the legendary Darlington Raceway and the tenth race of the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. As with every Sprint Cup event, SB Nation Atlanta presents some (potential) notes of interest on the 500-mile rumble at The Track Too Tough To Tame.

• Darlington hosted it's first race on September 4, 1950. The track hosted one race a year - the Labor Day Classic "Southern 500" - from 1950-59 with the exception of 1952 in which there were two races. In 1960, a second race at Darlington was added to the schedule. Originally held on Confederate Memorial Day and run under the moniker "Rebel 400," That name was dropped in 1983, by which point the race had expanded to 500 miles. From 1986-2003, Darlington hosted the fifth race of each season and the Labor Day Weekend race. In 2004, the Southern 500 was transferred to November in favor of a second race at the Auto Club Speedway in one of NASCAR's most maligned schedule adjustments in the last two decades. Trumping that, however, was the loss of a race at Darlington so that Texas Motor Speedway could host one as a result of the Francis Ferko lawsuit. Since 2005, Darlington has only hosted the one race, traditionally on Mother's Day Weekend though that is not the case in 2011.
• David Pearson, slated for induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame later this month, is the all-time winningest driver at the South Carolina race track. A native of Spartanburgh, SC., Pearson recorded ten victories at Darlington, including his 105th and final career win in 1980.
• As with more than a handful of circuits on the Sprint Cup schedule, Jeff Gordon is the victories leader among active drivers at Darlington. Gordon has seven victories in his 30 Darlington races, including five in his 12 Southern 500 starts from September 1993 to November 2004. He has one win since the track's schedule was cut back to just a single race, winning on Mother's Day 2007.
• Also as with more than a handful of circuits on the Sprint Cup schedule, 51-year-old Mark Martin is the active leader in starts, at least among regular drivers. He has 44 races at Darlington, including victories in the 1993 and 2009 Southern 500s. Part-time racers Terry Labonte (54) and Bill Elliott (52) are each ahead of Martin, but neither are entered in Saturday's race.
• Denny Hamlin is the defending champion of the Showtime Southern 500, winning last year's race after bad luck befell both Gordon and Jeff Burton - who swept at Darlington in 1999 - during their final pit stops. Gordon had just pitted when Joey Logano spun, trapping Gordon a lap down, while Burton had a penalty on his stop that effectively cleared the way for Hamlin's third of eight 2010 victories.
• Dawsonville's Bill Elliott is a five-time Darlington race winner, but perhaps the defining moment of his career came in September 1985 when he won the "Winston Million" in the program's first year of existence. The brainchild of the late T. Wayne Robertson, the Million was a bounty put up by then-Cup Series sponsor RJ Reynolds for any driver who could win three of the four "Crown Jewel" races. Elliott opened that season with his first of two Daytona 500 triumphs, then raced from two laps down under green to win the Winston 500 in Talladega that April. Amidst a mob of media sent to cover Elliott's exploits, he won the Southern 500 for his 10th of a record 11 superspeedway victories that season and bagged the Million. With the bonus, his payday was $1,053,725 - a King's ransom by NASCAR standards in 1985. Only one other driver would win the Winston Million: Jeff Gordon took the prize in 1997, the final year it was offered.
• Two-time Cup champ Terry Labonte won 21 times in his career, including twice at the Darlington Raceway. Interestingly enough, those two wins bookended his trips to victory lane. In September 1980, he beat David Pearson to a caution flag by a nose after Pearson, Dale Earnhardt, and Benny Parsons all slid in oil and hit the turn one wall with two laps remaining. At the time of Terry's first win, on September 1, 1980, 12 current Sprint Cup regulars weren't even born. After winning at his home track in Texas in 1999, Labonte went 156 races without another trip to victory lane. Then, in the final Labor Day running of the Southern 500, Labonte beat Kevin Harvick by just over a second in 2003.
• In March 2003, Ricky Craven beat Kurt Busch by .002 seconds in the closest finish since NASCAR implemented electronic scoring in 1993 - a mark tied by Jimmie Johnson and Clint Bowyer last month in  Talladega. In a scene straight out of Days of Thunder, the two banged doors off the final turn all the way to the checkered flag with Craven's Pontiac barely edging out Busch's Ford. It was Craven's second and final Cup victory and the last win for the Pontiac nameplate, which left NASCAR after the season to focus on sports car racing.
• Five-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson has two wins at Darlington, both coming in the track's last year with two races, 2004. The only other Cup champion since 2001 to ever win at Darlington is Jeff Gordon. Tony Stewart, Matt Kenseth, and Kurt Busch have all been shut out at the track, with Busch's second-place effort leading the way. Stewart and Kenseth each have a third-place finish to their credit. Darlington is one of only two tracks Stewart, with 39 career victories, has yet to win at in a Sprint Cup car.
• With a victory Saturday, Kurt Busch would join younger brother Kyle (May 2008) as winners at Darlington and become only the third pair of brothers to win at the track. Jeff and Ward Burton each have two wins, while Bobby Labonte added to older brother Terry's Darlington double with a win of his own in the 2000 Southern 500.
• Dale Earnhardt Jr. would join Dale Earnhardt as only the second father-son duo to win at Darlington Raceway. Buck Baker recorded three wins at Darlington while son Buddy scored back-to-back wins in September 1970 and May 1971.
• Since dropping back to a one-race schedule, here are the winners and runner-up finishers at Darlington Raceway: 2005 - Greg Biffle over Jeff Gordon; 2006 - Greg Biffle over Jeff Gordon; 2007 - Jeff Gordon over Denny Hamlin; 2008 - Kyle Busch over Carl Edwards; 2009 - Mark Martin over Jimmie Johnson; 2010 - Denny Hamlin over Jamie McMurray

As always, for more news and notes on all things NASCAR, check out SB Nation's NASCAR hub and NASCAR Ranting and Raving.