Richard Petty, Jeff Burton explain what makes Darlington a tough racetrack

“To me, what makes Darlington so great for drivers and fans, is that it’s really hard. It’s a difficult race track, and you can see it,” Burton said. “You can see the drivers ride against the wall. You can see them having to change lanes. It’s always changing. When it’s changing as a driver, you’re having to make those adjustments, but the fans can see the driver making those adjustments.

“I think that track, more than anywhere else, shows how hard it is to drive a race car.”

As for Petty, the seven-time champion harkened back to his memories at Darlington, where he won three times, recognizing it’s one of the tougher, but more rewarding tracks, that NASCAR will journey to.

“So you’ve got to look at Darlington, that was the first superspeedway that Cup started running. The deal was that it was the biggest race of the year, so like Daytona is now, it was then. Anybody you talk to in racing, they want to win Darlington. They want to win Daytona, naturally, but Darlington’s probably next on their list,” Petty stated. “Just because it’s such a tough race track. I ran down there for years and years, I finally won three races in two years, and then none before that and then after it. But I always liked Darlington.

“It suited the way I drove, I just didn’t have a lot of good luck there. But again, it was so demanding, not just on the driver, but it was demanding on the car. The grooves changed as the cars changed, so they run a completely different groove and stuff now, then what we used to run, just because of the way the cars are. So people had to learn the race track, but then they got to learn the cars, to fit that race track.”

Alas, it remains to be seen who will join Richard Petty and a long list of other tremendous drivers as winners at Darlington. Sunday’s race should be another doozy, and Petty, Jeff Burton and the rest of the NASCAR world will be watching closely.