It began with conversations around the offices at Darlington Raceway. It continued with telephone calls to executives at parent company International Speedway Corp. It culminated with discussions with drivers and industry insiders, almost all of whom told Chris Browning the exact same thing.

Bring back the Southern 500.

"Overall, the response was very positive," said Browning, president at NASCAR's oldest major speedway since 2004. "The first comments basically were, look, if it's a 500-mile race at Darlington, and you only have one 500-mile race at Darlington, it needs to be known as the Southern 500. So it made a lot of sense. The majority, and I mean the vast majority, of the folks we spoke with were very much in favor of this and saw it as a positive."

So now the venerable Southern 500, once the biggest event on the NASCAR calendar, will be reborn. Moved off its historic Labor Day weekend date in 2003 and then forced into hibernation by schedule realignment a year later, the Southern 500 will return to Darlington when the track runs its next Mother's Day weekend event in May of 2009.

Bringing back the Southern 500, the name bestowed on NASCAR's first 500-mile race and first event on a paved track in 1950, has been on Browning's mind since he moved to Darlington following the sale of North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham. Long one of the sport's marquee events, the Southern 500 fell victim to sponsor concerns when Darlington lost one of its two annual Sprint Cup dates to Phoenix International Raceway in 2004. The event the track retained was named for Dodge, which had backed what was the facility's spring race beginning in 2001.

But the manufacturer's relationship with the track ended after this year's Dodge Avenger 500. After the upheaval and uncertainly of 2003 and 2004, four consecutive sellouts and a long line of capital improvements have provided Darlington with a much more stable place on the NASCAR schedule. With a new title sponsor coming on board and the track's 60th anniversary looming, Browning felt it was the right time to revive one of the sport's most cherished traditions. (Continued)