DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Ward Burton's track record at Darlington Raceway, a mark that's stood for 12 years, is now living on borrowed time.

That much was evident Thursday at the recently-repaved 58-year-old facility, where on smooth new asphalt 31 drivers bested Burton's record in the second of two practice sessions for Saturday night's Dodge Challenger 500. Set in qualifying for the 1996 TranSouth 500, Burton's mark of 173.797 mph also came on the heels of a resurfacing. But it couldn't touch the top lap of 178.679 mph that A.J. Allmendinger -- a go-or-go-homer practicing qualifying runs -- recorded under the lights Thursday night.

And they're not done yet. "It's going to get faster when we get into qualifying trim," said Ryan Newman, who posted the 12th-fastest lap of the opening session Thursday afternoon. "That's just the way it will be. It's our first hurrah at the new Darlington."

For a while, the Sprint Cup drivers weren't even the fastest ones on the track. Denny Hamlin recorded a lap of 178.348 mph in the day's second Nationwide Series practice, an evening run which trumped the 175.797 mph that Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch put up in an opening Cup practice held in the hotter late afternoon. The existing Nationwide track record is 170.301 mph, a mark set by Newman in 2001.

That mark will also fall on a Darlington surface repaved over the winter as part of a $10 million renovation. Newman was one of three drivers, along with Jeff Gordon and Greg Biffle, who participated in a pair of tire tests at the track, the second one necessitated after cars hit speeds of 200 mph in the corners. While the raceway isn't quite that fast now, the slowest Sprint Cup car Thursday was still faster than the fastest car in practice last year.

"It was real similar to what it was when we tire tested," Biffle said. "Real, real smooth. They did a great job repaving it. It's almost Talladega smooth. Pretty fast, a little faster than I'd like to see here. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but tires become a concern when you start getting down to the 28-flats and it's so hot and sunny. It hasn't cooled off at nighttime yet. We'll just wait and see. The track's going to take some rubber, and we'll see what happens."

After the first practice ended, drivers with manufacturers in common huddled for longer than usual in the garage area, comparing mental notes. Newman and Penske teammate Kurt Busch conferred in one place, Dodge drivers Bobby Labonte, Robby Gordon, Kasey Kahne and Elliott Sadler in another.

"It's pretty much a brand new racetrack," said Sadler, a pole winner at Darlington in 2003. "It's a brand new car on a brand new surface, so everybody is just trying to figure out what they want, what they've got. I think everybody's pretty much fighting the same thing. Everybody's pretty tight. Track position is going to be important. It's going to be a pretty wild race."

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It's going to be very physical on your body, driving that hard and driving that fast.

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DALE EARNHARDT JR.

Sadler said the repaved Darlington compares to only two other tracks in terms of smoothness -- the Las Vegas Motor Speedway drivers competed on in the inaugural event there in 1998, and Talladega Superspeedway, repaved in 2008 by the same company, Texas-based Sunmount Corp, that did Darlington. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who posted the third-fastest practice speed Thursday afternoon, agreed.

"It's remarkable," he said. "The track's great, in good shape. It's pretty warm today, we're running really fast and the track surface itself is holding up really well. The speeds are pretty insane. The grip's good. It's going to be interesting to see how the cars are on 40- or 50-lap runs. Everybody's out there running three or four laps and doing OK. But it'll be interesting to see who falls off a lot and who doesn't. It's possible for somebody to maintain a really, really fast pace. It's going to be very physical on your body, driving that hard and driving that fast."

It's fast, but Newman said the track and tire combination doesn't feel treacherous, as was the case after recent repaving jobs at Las Vegas and Lowe's Motor Speedway outside Charlotte. But the new surface might bring about another detriment drivers won't know about until the take the green flag Saturday night.

"I think it's going to make passing very hard," Sadler said. "I hate to say this, but I think it's going to be a pretty bad, single-file race. I think the first three or four guys in clean air are just going to take off and be able to get away from everybody. It's not uncomfortably fast, but it is very fast and very smooth. We'll see if it wears out any between now and Saturday night."

Newman agreed: "It's going to be very important to be up front," he said. "These cars, they push such a big hole in the air, you can be a 15th-place car and be up front and look like a hero."

But that wasn't his biggest gripe Thursday, which concerned having to be in Darlington at all. The Thursday session was a new addition for this season, designed to give drivers more time to get accustomed to the new surface. Not everyone appreciated the gesture.

"I don't think we needed to come here," Newman said. "We had the advantage of a Goodyear tire test, which was great. But racing is a profession. We don't need to come here and waste our time on a Thursday."

And he didn't think the series needed to test at Charlotte on Monday and Tuesday, either. "No matter what, the strongest teams are always going to be the strongest teams, whether you have two extra days to adapt or not," he said. "It might give the other guys a chance to catch up a little bit, but that's not what we're here for. It's not 'let's let the other guys catch up,' it's 'let's go race.' ... In general, I think it's very unnecessary. If we're trying to cut the costs and do all those types of things, we don't need to be doing it."