NASCAR knocked it out of the park on Sunday at the Darlington Raceway. In the first race in 70 days, let alone the first major sporting event to return, NASCAR showed up on Sunday without any pre race prep nor pomp and circumstance and ran 293 laps of pure entertainment.

Now, they’ll do it again in a span of three days. Some may ask, can I take anything I learned from Sunday and apply it to Wednesday night’s race? The short answer is, not really. But, the drivers still feel the cream will rise to the top.

For starters, Sunday’s race was run in the heat of the day. Wednesday’s race will be run under night time conditions where the track will be vastly cooler which in turn means, more grip. That means setups will surely change in some form and with only two days away from the track between, that’s not much time to do much of anything. The cars we saw race on Sunday will be different on Wednesday with most teams electing to bring a new car for the race itself.

Also, Sunday’s race had no practice or qualifying prior. Wednesday’s race doesn’t have either as well, but it also has 400 miles of racing on the same real estate just days prior. While you can’t take much from setups from Sunday to Wednesday, the drivers still have had real racing experience recently, where they went 70 days without any racing between the March 8 and May 17 races.

Next, the starting lineup is different. On Sunday, the race was set by owners points in groups, meaning the top 12 of owners points coming into this past weekend’s race knew that they’d start in the top 12. For this race, it’s an invert. The 20th place finisher (Ryan Preece) is now on the pole for Wednesday night. The 19th place finisher (Ty Dillon) will roll off second and so on. The winner on Sunday (Kevin Harvick) will start 20th. Get it?

That makes the start of the race entirely different as well. The first stage ends on Lap 60. That awards points. The fast cars from Sunday only have 60 laps to make their ways through the field. They didn’t have to worry about that in the last race. That in turn can lead to mistakes and crashes from them.

In 117 past races now at Darlington, just six times (5.12%) has someone won from a starting spot outside of the top 20. That’s how important finishing in the top 20 on Sunday was. Furthermore, 99 of the 117 times (85%) has the winner came from the top 10. Kevin Harvick won from sixth on Sunday.

From there, it’s a vastly shorter race. Sunday’s race was 400 miles (293 laps). Wednesday’s race is 500 km (228 laps). That’s a 64 laps shorter, meaning those guys coming from the back have to charge hard — early.

Despite that, the usual suspects will likely find their ways to the front, despite a different looking event again.

“I think definitely the teams that were good today are going to be good on Wednesday night,” said second place finisher Alex Bowman. “The track is going to be a little different, probably a little more rubbered up. It’s definitely going to be different.  The invert and everything is going to be quite a bit different. I (do) think the guys that were good are going to be good again.  The invert might help some guys in clean air that we didn’t see this week.”

Harvick dominated on the 1.366-mile South Carolina race track on Sunday — again. He’s finished in the top 10 in literally every race run this season as well as all seven times at the Lady in Black since joining Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014. He’s also led 677 laps in those seven starts too — including 159 of which in a dominating win on Sunday.

Kurt Busch finished third for his fourth straight top seven result at Darlington and third straight top seven on the season.

Chase Elliott has won an Xfinity Series race at Darlington in the past to go along with two top five finishes now in his last three Cup Series starts there. Denny Hamlin rounded out the top five after scoring his fifth top 10 in his last six tries.

Look for the top 10 in the finishing order to be near there again on Wednesday.