“Every position that you go for out there, you've just got to gouge and bang and run people over and fight with each other and run into each other under caution. It was absolutely out of control out there.”

For those who measure the quality of racing by green-flag passes for the lead or by drag races to the finish line, Darlington was a disappointment this year, but to look at the Southern 500 only in those terms is short-sighted.

There was plenty of hard racing and plenty of passing for position. Martin had to work his way back toward the front after a mistake on pit road. Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon, who finished third and fifth, respectively, fought hard for those final positions after late two-tire pit stops.

Greg Biffle, who dominated the middle stages of the race and at one point opened a lead of more than eight seconds, needed a banzai run in the closing laps—after a spin off turn four on lap 296 — to rescue an eighth-place result.

Strategically, a succession of complex decisions wove an intricate tapestry, as calls on pit road—along with stellar or sloppy work by the crews, as the case may have been—repeatedly scrambled the running order and maintained an air of suspense as to the outcome. Not until Martin repelled Johnson's all-out attempt to take the lead after a restart with 21 laps left was there a real sense of who might win the race.

As it invariably does, Darlington also served as a yardstick for young drivers. After running a solid, sensible race in the Nationwide Series race the night before, Joey Logano was positively racy in the 500. He led 19 laps and finished ninth, suggesting that the hoopla surrounding his arrival in the Cup series as an 18-year-old wasn't just empty hype.

Brad Keselowski, also driving a Cup car at Darlington for the first time, finished seventh, suggesting that, unlike seven drivers who preceded him as surprise winners at Talladega, he won't be shut out of victory lane for the rest of his career.

Sure, Darlington is different now. So is the Southern 500, which used to be run on a hot, sticky Sunday before Labour Day, instead of on a warm Saturday night in May. But one glance at the red-and-white throwback walls in turns three and four — with the solid black stripe from contact with the right sidewalls of the Cup cars' tyres running from the entry to the exit — provided a clear reminder that the essence of the place is flourishing — and that there's still much to treasure there.

by Reid Spencer/Sporting News