Southern Charm Keeps Darlington on the Schedule

It is a dinosaur, a throwback to the early days of Winston Cup racing, an irregular 1.366-mile oval of gritty, crumbling asphalt that tests the skill and courage of those who dare to challenge it.

It rises from the sandy soil of northeastern South Carolina, almost within an arm’s length of Route 151, or so it seems.

It is the Fenway Park of speedways. The wall between what now are Turn 1 and Turn 2 at the egg-shaped track is a feature every bit as distinctive as Fenway’s Green Monster in left field. The wall at Darlington is smaller but more dangerous. For more than a half-century, it has marked cars with its signature “Darlington stripe.” Cars turn laps that teeter on the edge of disaster, and they often brush the wall at that end of the speedway.

The track, site of the Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 this weekend, has two nicknames, both sinister in nature: “The track too tough to tame” and “the Lady in Black.” Drivers love it or hate it. Some drivers love it and hate it. Kyle Petty once said, in a fit of pique, that Darlington should be filled with water and stocked with bass.

Established in 1950 as NASCAR’s first paved superspeedway, Darlington is home to the Southern 500, for years second in prestige only to the Daytona 500. Drivers say Darlington is one of the most difficult tracks to master. It should surprise no one that such combative drivers as David Pearson and the late Dale Earnhardt lead the list of all-time winners at the track.

Among current drivers, Bill Elliott and Jeff Gordon have five wins each at Darlington. Elliott says Darlington is a driver’s track where setup is crucial “because if your car is bad, it’s only going to get worse.”

“The surface is so old, you are constantly slipping and sliding around the place,” Elliott says. “You have to worry about conserving tires because they wear out so quickly. You don’t want the car coming out from underneath you.”

Darlington was enlarged in 1953 from its initial size of 1.25 miles. Different installments of asphalt over the last half-decade have made the pavement tough to maneuver on despite a complete resurfacing in 1996. The difficult conditions are part of what makes the track unique and generally provide an entertaining race.

The latest trend in racing architecture is to construct 1.5-mile tracks similar to multi-use stadiums. The new tracks have air-conditioned, soundproof luxury boxes with all of the trimmings, but they lack the character of Darlington, Bristol, Richmond or Martinsville.

The racing is predictable at new tracks because they are built fairly flat to accommodate a variety of races, mainly open-wheel and stock car, to recoup the cost of construction and to make a profit.

Darlington’s biggest drawback is its location. Although it’s two hours from Charlotte, N.C., it is hardly a world-class market, nor can it easily accommodate a NASCAR event. Hotels quadruple rates during race weeks and make three-night stays mandatory.

Still, “there will always be a place on the schedule for Darlington,” says Jim Hunter, a former Darlington president and current NASCAR vice president for corporate communications.

NASCAR might not need to go to Darlington or Rockingham more than once a year, but without them on the schedule, it would be like baseball without Fenway Park or Wrigley Field.