Darlington's lone race will be run on a Saturday night this season. Credit: Autostock

Darlington will be different for Jarrett

DARLINGTON, S.C. (AP) -- Dale Jarrett shrugs his shoulders when he looks at what has become of the old country track he used to visit when his daddy went racing.

Gone is the big scoreboard and play set at Darlington Raceway where Jarrett would climb while his father, Ned, mixed it up with NASCAR stars of the 1960s. Now, rising up around the track's perimeter is a multimillion lighting system. And Darlington's first official night race, the Dodge Charger 500 on May 7, is also a NASCAR departure -- running on Mother's Day weekend that's normally an off-week in Nextel Cup.

Dale Jarrett

"It's different but, you know, there's changes going on everywhere," Jarrett said Wednesday before testing his Busch car. "Why not here, too?"

Each year that goes by seems to bring another crack in Darlington's tradition. First, NASCAR leaders moved the Southern 500, a staple of Labor Day for more than half a century, to California Speedway. Then, Darlington's Nextel Cup schedule was cut in half, sliced to one race in a realignment bow to several bigger tracks that only had one date.

At first, Darlington president Chris Browning saw the switch to Mother's Day weekend -- NASCAR's largest series hadn't run on that weekend since Atlanta in 1986 -- as one more step toward the eventual demise of the longtime Nextel Cup venue. Then he realized demographics had changed in the past two decades.

He said studies show that NASCAR spectators have shifted in the past two decades from about 70 percent men and 30 percent women to almost 50-50. That means more families are bringing mom along to watch the race with them, Browning said.

Advance ticket sales back that up. Browning said the track is less than 1,500 seats from its first pre-race sellout in who knows how long. He expects to sell all his seats by Sunday or Monday. "That's the way it's looking," Browning said. "We're happy with the way it's going."

Part of the excitement, Browning says, comes from fans wanting to watch a full-blown night race in the Dodge Charger 500.

An exhibition under the lights last August drew a crowd of about 15,000.

"It seems more exciting under the lights," said Kasey Kahne, testing his Dodge at Darlington on Wednesday.

A pre-race sellout could do wonders to keep Darlington on the Nextel Cup schedule.

Browning had approval from International Speedway Corp., which owns Darlington and several other Nextel Cup sites, for capital improvements on the track, including upgrading access tunnels. He hopes a full house on May 7 might provide the case to expand the track's seating capacity.

The whispers about Darlington's demise don't seem to go away. Most recently, track officials had to knock down a report that Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports Inc., wanted to buy Darlington and send its lone Nextel Cup date to another one of its tracks. Browning says he has sold tickets in 48 states -- he's missing Hawaii and New Mexico.

"Looks like we're going to sell just about every ticket we got," Browning said. "We were hoping for demand like this, but with a new date and everything, you don't know."

Browning hasn't heard anything official about Darlington's place in the 2006.

"I feel pretty confident that there won't be any changes" in the NASCAR schedule affecting the "Track Too Tough To Tame."

Jarrett, a three-time Darlington winner, said the track has brought a lot of thrills to racers and fans through the years and deserves a Nextel Cup spot. "We don't need everything the same and, obviously, there's nothing like this," Jarrett said. "So I think you've got to have racetracks like this."