DARLINGTON, S.C. - Harold Brasington III recalls riding around the infield at Darlington Raceway as a youngster with his grandfather, the man who built the track, watching as his namesake said hello to the likes of Dale Earnhardt, David Pearson, Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough.
Harold III, now 52, will witness history once more Sunday: The 70-year-old South Carolina raceway will host the return of NASCAR competition with a 3:30 p.m. Cup Series race that will be televised by Fox, among the biggest events so far as sports makes a halting comeback from a global shutdown forced two months ago by the coronavirus pandemic.
The second-tier Xfinity Series will then fire up for the first time since March on Tuesday night at the 1.366-mile, egg-shaped oval billed as "too tough to tame." Cup Series drivers will come back Wednesday for a weeknight race - the kind fans have urged NASCAR to try with its elite circuit, which usually runs only on Saturdays or Sundays - to cap a busy time for the track known as the "Lady in Black."
"I think Darlington is the poster child for inspiration and luck kind of linking up together," said Brasington, whose grandfather died in 1996 and was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2016.
It's hard to argue.
The track hosted two NASCAR races every year from 1950 to 2003, including the Southern 500 on Labor Day weekend, considered a marquee race for the Cup Series. But a push for bigger TV ratings and fancier, modern raceways - and some neglect in upkeep at the old country track - had some wondering if Darlington might join the list of shuttered, defunct Southern tracks such as North Carolina's Rockingham and North Wilkesboro.
Instead, the track - considered the circuit's original superspeedway and its first long track to be paved - has held on as NASCAR embraced its history. Since 2015, Darlington has hosted a throwback weekend around Labor Day with a popular celebration of NASCAR's colorful past.
Come Sunday, that legacy will be one of hope as the sport powers back up.
"For us, it's exciting that we have our chance to go out there and compete," said Chip Ganassi Racing driver Kurt Busch, the 2004 Cup Series champion.
Busch was involved in one of Darlington's most memorable moments, a last-lap, metal-crunching duel to the finish with Ricky Craven at the 2003 Cup Series spring race. The two cars slid past the finish line locked together, with Craven winning by two-thousandths of a second, tied for the closest finish in NASCAR history.
AP photo by George Gardner / Kurt Busch, right, and Ricky Craven collide after the finish line during a NASCAR Cup Series race on March 16, 2003, at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. Craven edged Busch to win the race.Like all the old speedways, Darlington has its quirks. Harold Brasington had envisioned a standard oval, but he had a problem: A local landowner didn't want to give up his minnow pond, so Darlington was built with what is now turn four tighter than the other end of the track.
Speak with almost any driver, and it won't be long before they say of Darlington that "you have to race the race track." The assymetrical corners mean drivers who spend too much time focused on their foes will undoubtedly hit the wall - and often do.
That's why Darlington's list of Cup Series winners reads like the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Pearson heads it with 10 victories, with Earnhardt right behind at nine and Jeff Gordon with seven.
Bill Elliott won the "Winston Million" bonus prize at Darlington in 1985 as he captured three of NASCAR's four crown jewel races. Yarborough, who famously went over the wall in 1965 in a horrific-looking crash, holds the track record with five Southern 500 wins.
It is a long, storied history that Darlington Raceway president Kerry Tharp has gladly brought to the forefront since taking the job in 2016. This year's throwback celebration, still scheduled for Sept. 6 as the opening playoff race for the Cup Series, honors NASCAR champions.
First, though, comes NASCAR's return. Tharp can't imagine a more fitting or daunting mission for his Darlington crew.
"We're proud of that," he said. "We know it comes with a great responsibility, but we're up to the task."
Brasington's family has enjoyed its connection to NASCAR - one of Darlington's grandstands is named for the founder - and took great pride in learning the track would host Sunday's race. Harold III said when he lived in Oregon in the early 1990s, he saw a person at a grocery store wearing a Darlington T-shirt who told him his family came to South Carolina for NASCAR every year.
"It brought home to me the impact that track has had on people," he said, chuckling.
Tharp, who has worked for NASCAR since 2005, got his first true appreciation of the track from the late Jim Hunter, a racing executive and former Darlington president who told him: "You're going to really, really think a lot of this place one day. This is a special place."
Tharp has become a true believer.
"We might not be the fanciest or the most modern track out there," he said. "But I think we're the coolest."