Darlington Raceway History Tour! Inside Forgotten Details of NASCAR's Most Unique Track

and it made it like no other ever. His vision was to build an Indianapolis down south for stock cars. So then when he got this property, it wasn't big enough to do that. So then his idea was, okay, I'll just build a track the same on each end, a true oval. So he started building now what is now turns one and two, the old turns three and four. Well, he started to do the same thing on his end. And Sherman Ramsay, who had who had given him the land at that car game, had been out of the country. He comes back into the country and says, "Harl, what are you doing? You've gone too far over on the property." Because what was where this building and stuff is right here? That used to be a Mena pond. So if you see there and all the way down back over there, can you see that? Yeah, I can see the pond. That's That's Ramsay's pond. Okay. And so Mr. Ramsay had his minnow pond right over here and he wanted to use his minnows to fish in his pond. Harold thought he was just going to throw dirt in it, cover it up, and he was going to make this end the same way it was on the other end as far as the circumference, everything else. And Ramsay said, "You're not doing it." He had to cut this end shorter than he did on the other end, making the egg shape. This is the bottom of the egg. Now, I can show you. And we'll go in and I'll show you a little bit what is coming out of turn two. When when he built that turn, it sort of came to a point where he had to bring it this way. So he he was off a little bit to make it just completely nice and flush. It came to here and he's like, "Oh goodness, I got to I got to stop and I got to make it straight." So it comes to a stop and then that's why you have so many people that have some trouble coming out of what is turn two now because he had to cut that corner shorter than he anticipated. A lot of it was eyeball construction. Now, he had some blueprints, but again, it was the first time it had ever been done, you know, so it was it was a learning as you go type of thing. But his idea was we're going to get it done. And they did. It's a great example how sometimes what you think um are your problems or deficiencies can become your assets when packaged the right way. That's right. In 1997 was the year that we moved the finish line from one side to the other. And the reason for that was like you saw before, we didn't have there's not a lot of property over there. It's all owned on the other side of the street by private land owners for the most part except for one little strip. So the idea was we were able to get we were able to finally buy some property back here. We built a causeway through the woods and it opens up into a big parking area. So now we can park our fans back there right off of what we call Petty Boulevard. So we were able then to build seats. Tyler Tower was built what 94. That's when we started building Tyler Tower. Pearson Tower. The first uh part up was built in 97. The next part was built in '98. The Brazington Tower was built after I had left here. That was in the mid 2000s that the Brazen Tower was was erected. We had to build a new Victory Lane whenever we moved everything. just jumped off. Why don't we go over to where the original front stretch was? You can show us where where was the original victory lane? Where were the garage areas? Like paint the picture of how it was. This victory lane here when we flip-flopped the finish line. This is the only piece of property that we had where we could build a victory lane. So, you can see we used every bit of it. It's It's not a very large victory lane, but it works out nice. It's nice and compact. We got the flowers in there. We'll have some new backdrops and everything else. RICKY CRARAVEN DROVE THE WHEELS OFF IT TODAY. The crew is cheering him as they SHOULD BE. WHAT A RUN. OH, here we go. Everybody gets wet. Uh, Mobile One is now the sponsor of our victory lane. That's going to be uh upgraded here in the next couple days. Um, but it's it's really a cool compact victory lane and it's right here beside Pit Road. But this was that was the real estate that we had to do that. The whole flip-flop aspect of it is so fascinating to me because you didn't get rid of what was over there when you switched it. You just put new stuff over here and left this the way it was. So in a way That's right. This is like the the throwback. This is That's right. It's just so cool that it it lives. So this you sort of see where this old asphalt you sort of see how it does right there. Yeah. So the original victory lane it was a where you ran up an incline and it stopped. So it was an incline and it stopped. It was right in here and it stayed for many many many years. So you know back in the 50s that's where first of all when they first started they didn't have really victory lane. They just did victory out on the racetrack. But eventually when a victory lane came, this was an elevated thing where you would go up and park it and that's where all the the celebration was. Um then you go back into, you know, the 80s and the 90s of Victory Lane, they tore down that and then they built something right in here that had fencing around it and basically you drove up. You didn't climb up anything. You just drove underneath a sign. So you had a per you had a perfect backdrop where the car would be right here and the your your sponsor sign would be right up above it. So that was built right here and that was used until 1997 until it was time to flip-flop to start finish lines. And here's another cool thing too. Um if you go back and look at old photos of this place, there used to be a tin roof that went all the way down this racetrack. It was all it covered the entire Calvin grandstand. And you talking about loud when those cars and you they had those big big engines in them. They were very very loud. They would come out of turn four and they would come through here and it was so so super loud. I mean, I can remember being there. You had to have the headphones on to try to help with the with the sound um to protect your ears. We had that until 1989. Hurricane Hugo came and hit the east coast. And while we were not right there because it was really down in Myrtle Beach where it really really hit here, it messed up the foundation. There was so much wind that it messed up the foundations of that roof and so we had to tear it down. Also, while you see Brazington, Grand Brazington is over on the outside of turn one. now forever. It was right outside of turn number two and it and it was an old wooden stand. Uh you see that's concrete barriers up there. Uh concrete seating. But the Brazington stand was different in the fact that it was made of wood and steel. Uh but you could see, you know, you could see underneath you, you know, because it was split with wood and stuff, but it had a roof on it, too. And then eventually when we moved everything over there, it was time to tear it down and we built brazen over on the other side. What was that little building right there for? That's always been a suite, but years and years ago it was called the president suite. So the president of the racetrack could invite all kinds of guests. You know, you'd have political people, you'd have sponsor people, you have just guests of the racetrack. But that was called the president's suite. Uh it's called the Champions Club today where we have some uh a lot of folks just buy tickets to come in there. Is that like the old uh fuel building? That's the old Goodyear building. Okay. That's the old Goodyear building right there. You had you had Unical Building. You had Goodyear building. That was UniCow. That was Goodyear. That's it. They were both right here together. Yep. Square bricks. Were those original structures too? Yes. So that's the original infield care center also. That's it. That's exactly right. So they called for the doctor to come down. They have brought him to the care center. Now we understand they've sent for an ambulance, but right now Dale Nhard is in the infield care center being checked out. That was the original and then eventually they built another care center down here. Um and then it was torn down and now there's a new care center there too. But but so so right here we we'll go out there. Yeah, let's go there and look at that. I don't want to see the old holes for the timing equipment and everything. See, this used to be the cup garage. Now, this is used by the Infinity series. It might sound like a broken record, but I think it's so awesome that none of this um original structures were taken down. They just stayed there. Well, that's the great thing about concrete brick. uh concrete blocks. Of course, they've all been different things that have been done over the years to upgrade them to make sure that they're good facilities. It's hard to reinvent a roof. That's about all that garage is. Yeah, there's no need to change it. Now, what are these backstretch pits used for now? They're not. They're just just there. Yeah, they're not. See, let me just show you something right quick. Look straight down. Remember what I told you while ago about how the turn ends before it should have? Yeah. Look, just look. Look and see what I'm talking about. How it comes to that point. See how? And then all of a sudden then it has to do a quick round. Yeah. In reality, the turn should have come out a lot further. So you see what I'm talking about? Yeah, it was. That's why you have a lot of folks that will hit this wall here coming out of what is turn two. Now, does it do something weird down here, too? It almost looks like it kicks out. It kicks out a little bit. Thus, again, it wasn't there wasn't a big big amount of quote engineering in it. It was it was Harold who wanted to build a racetrack and and he did it. And so, the character of this place started with the very first Southern 500 1950. And the great thing is it's been going for 74 years. Every track president, everyone, they've always wanted to keep that character intact. And that's what we've been able to do. Have the concrete walls been redone since the first time they were made to be concrete? Well, you got to think now when they first built this place, there was not concrete there was not concrete walls. It was it was guard rails. Believe it or not, my grandfather uh WD Brandom actually supplied the wood. He he had a um an old saw. So all the wood that made the first uh guard rails here came from Brandham Lumber Company about a mile outside of what is turn one. That's awesome. Yeah. So um it's been different things over the years, but the concrete's been here for a long long time. I don't I don't I can't remember if it's been replaced since it was originally put in there. Um I would say yeah because originally when they put it up there they didn't have enough reinforcement. They did now I remember um they completely redid them because they put reinforcement in it. Ah so that was before you had soft walls but you had to have concrete walls that were going to if if a car hit it the right way you know you didn't want it to to break apart. So whenever they did redo it they put reinforcement in it. A lot more reinforcement than what was in there prior to where did Kelly Arboro drive out of the track down there. what is now turns three and four about the about the middle where that Darlington sign is. That's where he and Sam McQu got together and that's where he went over the wall right there into a telephone pole. You should put a should put a plaque there. Yeah, I know. Kale's corner. That's it, man. Been here at the track for a little over a year altogether and this is my 12th season working in NASCAR for our racetracks. Did you aspire to have a career like this when you were younger? You know, I grew up uh going to races at Tallaladega as a kid and never never really thought about working in the sport. Um, I loved sports in general growing up and it was uh I got my start working in college athletics and then I did some tennis and golf events and then just uh back in 2012 found the opportunity at Tallaladega which aligned with some of my professional experience at the time and thought it would be really cool opportunity to go back and work at a at a facility where I used to go as a fan. Can we go up into the turn and show how narrow the the racing surface actually is? Yeah. So, here we we'll come up close. We'll take a walk up. Uh would the golf cart tip over? Have you tried to go up there? No, it won't tip over, but it'll we'll certainly have to make a lean to the left or the right. Have you tried to go up? We'll get up here a little bit just to give you a little bit of the sensation. Uh it progressively gets steeper the further up we go. It's 25° uh at the top here. So I'm going to stop. We'll we'll go right here up to the Darlington uh logo. And it's always cool to walk up the banking. Um because you really get that sensation of how steep it is. the further we get up here to the top, the the steeper the banking. And that's why they like to run as close to this wall as they can. Uh which affectionately leads to all the Darlington stripes, which you can see there's a little bit still here uh on the walls that'll get painted up fresh before the race coming up next weekend. And then every night uh after each race, we'll get out here, our track crew team, and they'll repaint the walls fresh uh before we before we kick off the next day's race. How uh close to the events itself do you repaint all this stuff? So, all the solid red and white that you see, our track guys get out here. They started about two weeks ago painting all of that. Uh then we have some some different guys that do painting on the track. So, uh, Jimmy Jolly over here, uh, painting the Goodyear has been doing the track surface painting for a long time here at the track. And then we've got a a group that comes in and paints all the logoed sections, uh, as well. So, they're here right now going around and and getting that touched up uh, before next weekend. That's a neat process. Do they have stencils and then they hand fill it in? So, a lot of the track stuff, Jimmy will will freehand draw um using a little bit of stencil help, but he usually just takes the the image, scales it, and then uh then does some chalk drawing first, and they go back and fill it in. So, as we go back around the front stretch, you'll see more of the logos that are all there. The unique thing is um obviously the the track surface is going to be painted, but all the walls have to be painted uh because of how close they run. We can't put decals on the walls because soon as the car hits a decal, it's going to rip it right off. So, all these have to be hand painted. Uh the only decals you'll see are actually on some of the inside portion uh of the walls where the contact is is very unlikely, especially during uh competition. That is interesting. I never thought about that before. So, this is our safer barrier. Um you can see the one of the safety enhancements that was developed a number of years ago. Um these soft walls are built to compress when the cars hit them so that it takes some of the load and some of the energy out of the crash uh as opposed to the old uh concrete walls uh that that were before the safer barrier. It gives a good demonstration of how much banking there is because the top of the wall is um shaved off to be level to the earth and it looks like it's a sharp it's a real sharp corner. It's a very sharp corner. Is there anything that's uh heavy on your radar of things you want to do or improve upon? Well, you know, it's always a balance here of of improvement but not changing the character of this facility. you know, um, our campgrounds are are very popular in the infield, so I'd love to, you know, down the road, let's see if we can expand on that in any way. Um, I would love to have a a full sweet tower above the front stretch at some point. Um, we've looked at how do we how do we make um, maybe an RV overlook over the back stretch down the road. So, there's a lot of ideas we've got. You know, nothing imminent right now in terms of definite plans, but those are some of the things. We just completed a renovation of the Pearson Tower over here. So, all the seats that you see uh were put in last year before our first race. So, we've got all chairback seating uh with cup holders and armrests in the Pearson Tower as well as the Tyler Tower and the Brazington tower down on the end. Um and then the Wallace section below on the front stretch are all metal chair back, you know, benchback seating. So, um that's one of our most recent enhancements uh that we've made here at the track. Interesting. The other cool thing that you could see from here is the light system. So Musco is our lighting partner and you've got the the lights all around the exterior of the track. Uh but then the other component of that for all of our NASCAR tracks are the inside light. So all of these little banks you see uh all along are shining light back onto the track surface, but it's structured so that it doesn't shine in the driver's eyes. Uh so it really helps brighten up and light the track up for night racing, which we'll have for the truck series. And then when we're back in September for the Southern 500, it'll it'll be start in the daytime and finish at night. Can you see where the flag stand used to be? Oh, yeah. I mean, well, you can't really see that now, but I mean, I can tell you where it was. Yeah. So, there's a the door and stuff looks like it's still there. So, so you see you you can see right now you can see where it was. It was right here. is it was center that center building up there. Okay. So, so what used to be over here go back in time before that before that was built. You got to remember when they first built this racetrack, there was no inside wall. We talked about Billy Meyers back in the 50s. There was no wall that separated the racing surface from the pits that as a result of that eventually they would build a a pit wall that would separate it. So on the other side of the pit wall on the other side of the pits, they had what they called they had a control tower that was down in here. So that there was nothing up there yet. There used to be a square building that was on the other side of the wall over here and that is where all the equipment was and stuff that was measuring this that and the other scoring uh everything where they threw the caution and everything else. That's where they were housed. That's where the the um the NASCAR officials were. Again, it was just a square building and it was elevated. So that's where they call the race from right over there. Eventually eventually you would have again the tin roof up here that would go away. This would be built. And so you had three boxes up there. You had NASCAR control. you had the uh MRN and then you had um the PA booth. So that's what was that was up there but excuse me the PA booth and MRN shared a booth. So it was eventually it would be it'd be NASCAR control television broadcast MRN and PA shared a booth but that's where they called it that was called the eye in the sky. Do you know about what year that that went up? that that had to have been that was uh early '8s because they actually had a little smaller eye in the sky before that. It was just a little tiny buildings that were sitting up on top of there and they eventually took those down and built these. So this was a big upgrade from what they used to have there. So you first of all didn't have anything was first built. Then you had the the square building over here. It was taken down. The roof was up there. They put small little buildings up there and that those became the eye in the sky. Eventually, those were knocked down and then that was built. That was the control tower until we flip-flopped it in 1997. And then that became your new control tower. Well, this will be the…