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DARLINGTON, S.C. -- For all the throwback touches that Darlington Raceway adopted in the preamble to the 66th running of the Bojangles' Southern 500, the venerable old track delivered Sunday night on one more nod to the days of yore -- the racing.
The tradition returns.
The reduced-downforce aerodynamic rules might well deserve the "new package" label, but the slipping and sliding action from drivers manhandling unwieldy cars over the course of nearly four and half hours conjured up memories of Darlington races gone by. The combination of the aero setup with softer-compound Goodyears produced a tire-gnawing marathon worthy of another Labor Day classic.
Carl Edwards might be biased after converting a mammoth rally into victory No. 25 in stock-car racing's premier division, but he was among those calling for the old-school racing from the quote-unquote new package to be the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series' standard rules in 2016, if not earlier.
"I'm kind of a shoot-for-the-moon kind of guy, and I hope a race like tonight makes them think about the idea of running this even in the Chase," said Edwards, who finished fourth in the debut race for the lower-downforce package in July at Kentucky Speedway. "Everybody has developed this package. I believe it's pretty obvious that it races really well and it's really fun to do and it's fun to watch. But even if we don't, I hope next year they really consider going farther this direction."
Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer, said that series officials would gather data from Darlington and previous races with varying packages and meet with NASCAR's three manufacturers, drivers, crews and Goodyear in the coming weeks to formulate next year's rules. O'Donnell, who said he expects the 2016 rules to be released toward the end of September, was pleased with the results of the package's Darlington redux.
"I look at it as, were the fans entertained? And when I looked down on Lap 10 to towards the end of the race, they were on their feet. So I think if you asked most of the race fans here tonight, did they enjoy four and a half hours of racing action, I think they'd say yes. For us, it's always about the entertaining racing on the track, and I think the drivers delivered that tonight. Certainly something we want to look at."
The return of the decreased-downforce package threw a new wrinkle at teams with a softer tire than the compound used at Kentucky. The gritty, abrasive surface of Darlington's 1.366-mile layout has always done a number on tires, regardless of their hardness. Sunday night's classic produced tire wear that left crews scrambling for strategy plays against a 12-set ration of fresh rubber, plus a bonus set of scuffs from practice to make a baker's dozen.
A track-record flurry of 18 caution periods made tire management that much more of a factor, with crew chiefs needing to pick and choose their spots for tire changes. But even with dramatic tire fall-off, driving ability under the new aero specifications made more of a difference.
"This is a perfect track for it. It definitely seems like the car is less affected behind other cars and you don't have such a big pocket of air that you're having to run through," said Rodney Childers, crew chief for fifth-place finisher Kevin Harvick. "That part of it's really nice. I think all in all, it just comes down to the race track. The race track's good for racing and the surface was right, the tire was right tonight and it just made some fun for those guys to be able to slide their cars around and have fun with it."
The rash of yellow flags was partly attributed to the track "Too Tough To Tame" living up to its punishing nickname, but also the reduction in aero stability. It's part of what led third-place Denny Hamlin, Edwards' Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, to laud the package's finicky nature.
"I think wrecks are good," said Hamlin, who led 57 of 367 laps. "Wrecks are good because we've made our cars so idiot-proof over the last four to five years. The tires are hard as a rock, the cars are so stiff that … it's just made it to where there are no wrecks any more. This package, you're sliding around so much, guys are making mistakes. We said a long time ago that the way that the back car passes the front car is to drive in deeper than that guy, and sometimes he makes it, sometimes he doesn't, and sometimes he wrecks, and that's what makes for exciting racing. I think we saw a taste of that tonight."
The rave reviews from Hamlin also trickled down to his crew chief, Dave Rogers, who was quick to mention a NASCAR Hall of Fame nominee in a weekend filled with such remembrances.
"This is what we grew up watching. This is what our fans want to see and what our competitors want to see," Rogers said. "Really cool to be getting passed in the short run and then passing people back in the long run. Reminds me of days of Mark Martin. Mark Martin would lay back, lose a bunch of spots, not get rattled, then drive back to the front. Denny Hamlin's just like Mark. It was neat to see guys do it. I think if this race ends on a long run, we've got a shot to win it. It ended on a short run, and our teammates won it. It's great. This is great racing. I love the package. I love everything about it."