Darlington Endures as NASCAR’s Ultimate Throwback

Darlington Endures as NASCAR’s Ultimate Throwback Jared C. Tilton - Getty Images Darlington Raceway, home to this weekend’s NASCAR national-series tripleheader, remains stock car racing’s version of Fenway Park, Lambeau Field, and Cameron Indoor Stadium. It’s the rare racetrack whose history can compete with the adventures of NASCAR’s top drivers.

Its challenges—the tight racing groove and the famously oblong shape that makes it two ends radically different—remain as difficult as they were in the speedway’s early days, when the idea of racing cars for 500 miles on such a surface was sometimes thought to be something a drunken executive devised. Yet the Darlington NASCAR’s Cup, O’Reilly Auto Parts, and Craftsman Truck drivers will test this weekend is distinctly different from the track NASCAR visited in the 1950s and 1960s. For one thing (and perhaps most dramatically), the track was “flipped” in 1997 when International Speedway Corp.

officials determined that moving the start-finish line to the opposite side of the facility would open up the possibility of adding new grandstands in prime viewing areas. From 1950, the track’s first year, to 1997, the front stretch was on the South Carolina Highway 151 side of the track, and there was little space between the road and the track for additional grandstand space. The racing surface remained the same, obviously, but race winners since 1997 have taken the checkered flag along a “new” front stretch.

Chris Graythen - Getty Images The original front stretch part of the track had undergone another significant change in 1989 with the removal of a covered grandstand that began at the exit of what originally was turn four. The cover of the grandstand, while shielding fans from often punishing South Carolina sun, amplified the engine noise from cars roaring through the turn and onto the front straight, making that part of the speedway the loudest of its 1. 366 miles.