Mean Ol' Lady: Darlington retains ablility to bite the unwary

DARLINGTON, S.C. -- The ice melted and the ocean receded all the way to Myrtle Beach, leaving behind a bunch of sand and bare feet and people who drive real fast.

That's pretty much the short history of the world, Darlington neighborhood.

Except for one major development. Harold Brasington, who owned a local heavy-equipment company and raced on Daytona Beach, built the first stock-car superspeedway on 70 acres of Sherman Ramsey's cotton fields in 1949, right after Martinsville unveiled the first paved NASCAR track.

Brasington didn't pay Ramsey a dime for the land, instead trading him stock in a new speedway corporation that needed $50,000 to construct the 1¼-mile track. Ramsey accepted the deal when Brasington agreed to preserve a tiny minnow pond, a concession that squeezed the track at one end and created an egg-shaped oval that has confounded drivers since the first Southern 500 on Labor Day, 1950.

All these years later, not too much has changed. The track grew to 1.366 miles, added a spring race and wound up under the France family thumb, property of International Speedway Corp. The Southern 500 moved to the Sunday before Labor Day in 1984 and, during NASCAR's marketing convulsions of the past decade, moved to California.

The beloved name evaporated. NASCAR gave Darlington one slim thread of hope and a previously taboo date: Mother's Day weekend. Jim Hunter, a NASCAR vice president who previously ran Darlington Raceway, understood the tenuous link to racing survival.

"Mother's Day -- that was a huge gamble," Hunter said. "That was a crapshoot."

In the new world of catered glass suites and blank corporate checks, Darlington looked tired and dusty and downright rural, which it was. "I always say I thought we missed a generation here," Hunter said. "They didn't know about it. When I grew up, everybody in the state knew about it."

To some folks, Darlington Raceway looked dead. They were wrong. The speedway sold all the seats for the fourth straight year last night, and 62,000 fans filled the grandstands, evidence of better advertising and a collective regional effort to save the economically important event.

At least 10,000 more customers crammed into the infield, a series of parking lots for carpenters' sagging pickups, millionaires' motor coaches and one old school bus painted Bud red in honor of the former No. 8 driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr. A message painted above the bus' front window says: "And we'll leave the Motel 8 Bud Lite on."

Earnhardt Jr. has now gone to green in his No. 88 Mountain Dew period. It's almost enough to make a fellow want to open a bar.

The Darlington infield, once the forum for Saturday night fistfights, has calmed down considerably. The vehicles park in reasonably organized rows these days, and nobody throws a glass bottle in anger, at least before sundown. The infield has become something of a museum for lost causes, including Junior's No. 8 Bud car and a few holdouts flying variations of the Confederate flag.

Actually, a few changes border on radical. Only five years ago, you couldn't drive across the track on race morning and venture very far into the infield before spotting someone walking barefoot on hot pavement strewn with glass. I was here at least an hour yesterday before anyone strolled by barefoot.

During the offseason, the proprietors repaved the track. "The Lady in Black" turned a lot blacker, the darker asphalt covering all those little rock piles and invisible dips.

Bill Elliott, who won his third major race and Winston's $1 million bonus here in 1985, shook off some mothballs and whirled the No. 21 Ford Fusion around the speedway.

"It's not the same Darlington," Elliott declared.

It's not the same Elliott, either, in case you're keeping score.

During practices and qualifying, several drivers warned that the fresh pavement made Darlington too fast for comfort, which must have amused fightin' Cale Yarborough of nearby Timmonsville and David Pearson, "The Silver Fox" from Spartanburg, who holds the track record with 10 NASCAR victories.

Former boss Hunter points out that when the speedway opened in 1950, the cars averaged 75 mph and topped out near 100 mph. Greg Biffle won this pole at 179 mph, and cars approach 200 down the straights.

"This place jumps up and bites people," Hunter said. "You can do a makeover on the old lady and you might make her look a little better, but she still jumps up and bites you."

The cars barely got up to speed last night before Elliott Sadler shimmied into Tony Stewart and shoved him into the wall between turns one and two. About 10 laps later, Sam Hornish Jr. sensed a deflating tire just as he scraped the wall all the way through the third and fourth turns.

In a nighttime flash, new and revived Darlington looked just like mean old Darlington, the eternally fascinating dinosaur that gives back some of racing's lost soul.

■ Lenox Rawlings can be reached at lrawlings@wsjournal.com
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