Darlington's rejuvenation has track thinking bigger (cont'd)

Which will be a stark contract to the former surface, so eroded by the weather conditions in South Carolina's Pee Dee region that Dale Earnhardt Jr. once joked it would cut you if you rubbed your hand against it. That abrasiveness became part of the track's identity, turning it into a tire-eating monster that only heightened the challenge of mastering the facility. The new asphalt, being mixed at a temporary plant on racetrack grounds, will be made from aggregate taken from the same mine that supplied the raw material for Darlington's last repaving, 12 years ago. But it will be far from the rough, unforgiving surface teams encountered this past May.

Will that prompt complaints? Browning doesn't think so. Unlike some repaving jobs, Darlington won't be superfast; engineers expect only a half-second pickup in terms of speed. The improved grip may allow cars to barrel into Turn 1 side-by-side. And the preferred way of attacking the racetrack won't change, even though the surface will.

"I think at the end of the day, with the bumps gone, and the smooth surface and what the modeling is showing us, they're still going to be able to run the same way they ran before," Browning said. "They're still going to be able to run the same lines. The fast way around the track is still the same: You diamond Turns 1 and 2, and you ride the wall in 3 and 4. That's still going to be the fastest way around."

Regardless, it's another large financial commitment from parent company ISC, and another cornerstone in Darlington's suddenly secure future. It's a strange sensation, being at a racetrack that for so long lived with the threat of extermination, and sensing so much optimism. At this past season's race weekend, the track's third consecutive sellout, there were no questions from reporters about whether Darlington would survive. No one can remember the last time that happened.

Things are going so well for Darlington, in fact, that there's constant speculation that the track will be eventually returned to its ancestral home on the NASCAR calendar, the Labor Day weekend spot where it was a fixture for half a century. On that matter, Browning is clear: He's aware of no concrete talks on returning Darlington to Labor Day, a weekend where current occupant California Speedway struggles to sell its 92,000 seats. Darlington now seats 63,000 with the addition of a new Turn 1 grandstand last year.

"We have not had any serious discussions about that, to my knowledge," Browning said of a potential return to Labor Day. "But I also learned a long time ago that you never say never in this business. I don't know what that's going to hold down the road. I would hope that if that date ever did move, that it would come back here, because this is the natural place for it to be."

Even with the success the track has enjoyed on Mother's Day weekend? Yes. "We're not out politicking for Labor Day, because we've been fortunate enough to be successful with Mother's Day," Browning added. "But if the powers that be decide they want to move Labor Day from California, I think this is the first place they need to seriously look, for obvious reasons."

It would seem to contradict logic: return the Labor Day race to the same place NASCAR took it from in 2003? Wouldn't that be admitting a mistake? Maybe, and maybe not. In many ways this is still the same old Darlington, the place Harold Brasington carved out of a peanut field in 1949 which would become NASCAR's first paved superspeedway. But in other ways, it's not. For so many years it languished, fell behind the more modern speedways that went up around the region, trotted right to the brink of obsolescence and looked over the edge. Now, as Browning plans for an ambitious future and crews work on a new tunnel, a new racing surface and smooth new concrete pit stalls, the track is making up for lost time.

It's always had a nickname. The Lady in Black. The Track Too Tough to Tame. Now, it's earned another one: Survivor.

"So many people thought we were being set up to fail with this Mother's Day date," Browning said. "I think the results have surprised people across the board, myself included, to be honest with you. It goes back to the fact that we have great fans. They've supported this place, and they understand the differences between Darlington and other tracks. They respect the history and the tradition. Darlington is the real deal, and our fans know that."