DARLINGTON, S.C. -- The future of NASCAR's oldest major speedway sits on Chris Browning's desk, in the form of a thick, ring-bound booklet packed with timelines, blueprints, architects' renderings, and maps. The president of Darlington Raceway reaches into his five-year master plan and pulls out a graphic of a two-story, barn-styled garage complex, complete with a fan observation area, that may one day grace the infield of this revered 57-year-old track.

September bound

Racing will once again resonate around Darlington Raceway on Labor Day weekend with the inaugural Darlington Historic Racing Festival on August 30-31, 2008.

The Darlington Historic Racing Festival will feature legendary cars and drivers from a variety of racing series, including NASCAR and IndyCar, from the 1950s through the 1970s. Racing personalities who have already agreed to participate include Junior Johnson, Buddy Baker, Darrell Waltrip and David Pearson.

"We are absolutely thrilled to bring more than 100 vintage race cars to Darlington Raceway on Labor Day weekend," said Chris Browning, track president.

The first tickets to the inaugural event were sold December 13 in the Darlington Raceway ticket office. Florence, S.C. resident Jack Hesley was the proud purchaser.

"When I heard tickets were on sale for this event I could not wait to purchase them," said Hesley, who first attended an event at Darlington Raceway in 1978. "I am excited to be back at Darlington Raceway on Labor Day weekend."

Tickets for the event are $15 per day or $25 for the entire weekend, children age 12 and under will be admitted free. Tickets can be purchased by calling the Darlington Raceway ticket office at 866-459-RACE or online at www.racetickets.com.

There's more. There's the hospitality village and the campground Browning wants to add to the banks of the pond that forced Darlington's unique egg shape. There are the new Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series garages, on either side of a new media center and Victory Lane. There's the relocated care center and helipad, the addition of a high-end motor coach lot overlooking the backstretch, the new credential buildings off the new road leading into the new tunnel.

"Can we get it as quickly as we want? Probably not," Browning said in his modest office alongside the first NASCAR facility to host a 500-mile race. "But the bottom line is, we can make good arguments for each of these projects, why we need them, the return on them, and how they're going to have a positive impact on the fans' and competitors' and the media's experience. Everybody who comes in here, these things are going to touch them in a positive way."

The way things have gone lately for Darlington, it might be unwise to bet against him. Browning's grand plans are but the latest chapter in what's been a remarkable turnaround for this old track in South Carolina's cotton and tobacco country, a speedway that only a few years ago seemed on the brink of falling off the schedule forever. It's been not only rescued but revitalized, buoyed by sellout crowds for its Mother's Day weekend races, and rejuvenated by a steady stream of capital improvement cash from parent company International Speedway Corp. ISC has pumped roughly $20 million into this facility the last four years, beginning with lights and a soft-wall system, and continuing with a new grandstand unveiled last season.

The current project is one of the more involved in the track's long history, a $10 million effort to repave the coarse racing surface and add a long-needed new tunnel capable of accommodating motor coaches and team transporters. On a recent afternoon the milling machines and pavers were at work, digging up the last remaining vestiges of the old asphalt, and evening out patches and rough spots in the base. And in a hole torn between Turns 3 and 4, where cars usually run so high against the wall, snaked the skeleton of a monstrous tunnel that will one day be buried by dirt and rock.

It's a behemoth, 30 feet wide and set in a hole dug 29 feet at its deepest, made of 29 arched, pre-cast roof sections weighing 15 tons apiece and swung into place by a crane. Work is about a month behind schedule due to water table issues, but it's expected to be completed well in advance of Darlington's May race weekend. It's desperately needed, as anyone who's tried to wriggle through Darlington's two narrow, old tunnels, or has waited in a long line of big vehicles waiting to cross the backstretch after an event, can attest.

Once the tunnel is completed and the gap around it filled, the repaving can take place in earnest. All around the racetrack are orange, spray-painted numbers and pins sunk in the surface, the hieroglyphics of a paving crew that wants an even surface all the way around. When Browning was last involved in a repaving process, at North Carolina Speedway 15 years ago, the machines dipped with the potholes and rose with the bumps, creating a smooth if uneven racing surface. The current crew from Sunmount, the Texas company that also repaved Talladega and Richmond, has the place computer-modeled down to the square inch.

"It's going to be exactly the same [all the way around], without the bumps and dips," Browning said. "It's going to be smooth as silk when we're done. It's going to be the same Darlington as far as the banking and everything else; we haven't altered any of that. But the track surface itself is going to be very, very smooth."

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."