DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Jamie McMurray's crew worked to buff out dents and scratches over the car's right-rear wheel well. Travis Kvapil's vehicle had a jagged gray scar down the side that looked like a lightning bolt. Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s machine had a long scrape nearly from nose to tail, blurring the red and green paint and cutting the No. 88 in half. Minutes after final practice began, the red flag came out: Kurt Busch had spun, and Joe Nemechek had hammered the wall.

“

This is the only race where I managed to pass out in the shower after the race, so this a long, long race. To me, this is the most physically demanding race we go to all year.

”

-- DENNY HAMLIN

And then there was the heat, the withering, shirt-soaking 90-degree heat that made the infield at Darlington Raceway feel like a griddle, and the Southern 500 feel like it had never parted ways with Labor Day. You can move the race to nighttime, you can move the date to May, you can cover this old egg-shaped layout with a slick new coat of asphalt. But the inherent nature of Darlington is still there, still in that wall that looms inches away, still in that almost imperceptible dogleg exiting Turn 2, still in the taxing challenge of driving 500 miles at a place where it's almost always hot, always humid, and the track is always a single groove wide.

"This is the only race where I managed to pass out in the shower after the race, so this a long, long race," Denny Hamlin said on a steamy Friday at NASCAR's oldest major speedway. "The thing about it, too, not only is it really long, but you're always hitting the wall, you're always knocking in the crush panels, you're always breathing that nasty air. To me, this is the most physically demanding race we go to all year."

The more things change at Darlington, the more they stay the same. They can dress her up with lights and a new tunnel and a new grandstand, but all that makeup does not mask the mean old girl within. There's no question that some of her once-fundamental characteristics have been altered through the years, with the move of the track's single race weekend from late summer, and new asphalt replacing a rocky old surface that would devour tires and force teams to take fresh rubber at every chance. But make no mistake about it, this is still the same nefarious old layout, still a place that tests NASCAR's best drivers, albeit tests them in a different way.

"It's unforgiving," said two-time Darlington race winner Greg Biffle, shortly before he crashed and was forced into a backup car. "The thing will eat you alive in a second." (Continued)