There's still time for you, the Internet, to pick the People's Pitstop lineup for this week's NASCAR Sprint Cup race (another Saturday Night Special) at Darlington. Here is some basic information about the venue of the week.
Track basics: Darlington Raceway, the South Carolina track "Too Tough to Tame," is a 1.366-mile oval with an odd shape (more on that below). It's also one of NASCAR's more historic tracks, having hosted its first race in 1950. At this track, drivers try to get as close as they can to the outer wall whenever possible. Many of them get too close, earning themselves a Darlington stripe.
Recent winners: Mark Martin (2009), Kyle Busch (2008), Jeff Gordon (2007)
Who wins here a lot: Jeff Gordon, Jeff Gordon, Jeff Gordon. Mr. DuPont has won seven Sprint Cup races here. No other active NASCAR driver has more than two wins.
So what's with the odd shape? You'd think a body as powerful as NASCAR would be able to dictate the shape of the tracks it uses, right down to the curvature of its press box. And these days, that would probably be true. But that wasn't the case in 1949, when, according to the track's official history, Harold Brasington started "a project known locally as “Harold’s Folly” to shape a 1-1/4 mile speedway on land that had once produced peanuts and cotton."
Unfortunately, Brasington had to answer to a higher authority. (No, not that one.)
"Brasington's plan called for a true oval, but the racetrack's design had to be changed in order to satisfy Sherman Ramsey, the landowner, who did not want his nearby minnow pond disturbed. The west end of the track (Turns 3 and 4) was narrowed to accommodate the fishing hole, creating Darlington's distinctive egg-shaped design."
As always, if you need to learn more, you can click here to download a PDF from the fine folks at Yahoo Sports. We'll be back with more thoughts.
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