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" Ben Stewart&amp;#039;s day-to-day blog ramblings from the road. 360-degree photos of Bristol, Darlington and Daytona on pages . The Charger&amp;#039;s suspension is compressed flat to the bump stops as it drifts up Darlington&amp;#039;s banking. The steering is getting twitchy and so am I. The passenger side mirror nearly brushes the wall off Turn 1. The next turn comes quicker than I can think. My eyes tell me to hit the brakes, my mind tells me to brace for impact, but I hold the line. And instead of decorating the side of the Charger SRT8 with a Darlington stripe, I hook it into the groove off Turn 2 and punch through the 100-mph barrier on the straight. Man, that was good. Man, that was scary. Big-league stock car racing is America&amp;#039;s motorsport. Nothing really compares with NASCAR&amp;#039;s multi-million-dollar sponsorships, TV deals and gritty metal-on-metal competition. Beneath the hype and glitter, though, the engines still echo with the sport&amp;#039;s down-and-dirty roots in that uniquely American livelihood: running moonshine. When guys like Junior Johnson weren&amp;#039;t running from the law, they were racing on dirt tracks around the Southeast, as well as on the beaches of Daytona. As the sport caught on in the &amp;#039;50s, NASCAR&amp;#039;s pioneers began building modern racetracks where the cars could hit speeds unthinkable even 10 years earlier. During the lull between the NASCAR season&amp;#039;s end and its traditional Daytona 500 season opener, I decided to pay homage to the roots of American racing. My goal was to visit some of the original and still-used tracks, places steeped in the history of the sport. There was no question that a visit to NASCAR&amp;#039;s Daytona birthplace was mandatory. After that I would follow the NASCAR trail and set foot--and rubber--on very different, but legendary, surfaces. I couldn&amp;#039;t think of a better way to make the trip than in a Dodge Charger SRT8--the Hemi-powered, street-legal personification of Dodge&amp;#039;s Nextel Cup Car. STARTING AT THE BEGINNING The very first NASCAR-sanctioned race was organized by NASCAR&amp;#039;s founder, Bill France Sr., on Feb. 15, 1948. It was run half on pavement and half on the sands of Daytona Beach, Fla. Racing on the beach always sounded crazy to me. Now I get it: The surface seems as hard as concrete, not bad for racing. But that hard sand wasn&amp;#039;t the best for spectators: As the cars came around the course they would spray grit at the stands, right into the fans&amp;#039; faces. However, it wasn&amp;#039;t the harsh viewing conditions of beach racing that led France to invest his time and money in a paved track. No, the underlying factor was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. &amp;quot;Bill&amp;#039;s idea was to take the closed-course speed record away from Indianapolis,&amp;quot; Dan Warren says. Warren was a good friend of France, and an attorney and politician who was instrumental in the Daytona track&amp;#039;s creation. &amp;quot;He built the track at 2.5 miles specifically to beat Indy&amp;#039;s record.&amp;quot; Warren has a near-photographic memory and is a pack rat: He still has the diagrams of the original track. Incredible. &amp;quot;We were having breakfast and Bill grabbed a doily, pulled out his pen and said, &amp;#039;I want to show you what I&amp;#039;m proposing to build in Daytona Beach.&amp;#039; And he drew what became the famous trioval.&amp;quot; According to Warren, France&amp;#039;s dream for a superspeedway began in 1952, and took seven years of financial and political finagling to come true. First he needed enough land for the project. The city engineer and eventual track engineer, Charles Moneypenny, told France about an ideal area west of the airport. &amp;quot;There was a high grade of marl gravel underneath the subsoil there. Most of the soil here is sand and you can&amp;#039;t build on it,&amp;quot; says Warren. One of the biggest challenges was the banking, which was set at 31 degrees so the cars could run 200 mph. But the transitions from 18 to 31 degrees confounded Moneypenny. According to Warren, they discovered the solution at the Ford Proving Ground in Detroit. &amp;quot;The banking at Ford wasn&amp;#039;t as high,&amp;quot; Warren says, &amp;quot;but they had the transition from the flat parts onto the banking. They shared their engineering reports so we could do it, too. &amp;quot;We also had to worry what 31-degree banking would mean for tire wear,&amp;quot; Warren tells me. France had heard that the Bethlehem Steel Mills in Birmingham, Ala., had a byproduct--slag--with very fine iron filings in it. France obtained the slag and mixed it with the asphalt for a surface with superb adhesion. Warren says, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s why the track stood so long.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m standing in an eerily silent raceway surrounded by empty stands. As I climb up to the outer wall, it is an almost religious experience. The 31-degree banking feels vertical when I try to stand. I look past the wall, through the catch fence and realize I&amp;#039;m a few stories up. And I shudder when I realize how close I am to where Lee Petty, patriarch of the Petty racing dynasty, went over the wall in 1961 before the 500. His car ended up a crumpled wreck close to the parking area. He was hospitalized for months, his racing career finished. As I go around the track--barely breaking the limit in a school zone--it&amp;#039;s obvious it hasn&amp;#039;t been repaved in 30 years. I can&amp;#039;t imagine what it&amp;#039;s like at 200 mph. Jeremy Mayfield, driver of the No. 19 Dodge Nextel Cup Car, knows exactly what it&amp;#039;s like. &amp;quot;The car needs to get as low as possible without dragging,&amp;quot; he tells me. &amp;quot;You want to run the springs as soft as you can--actually run them so you get coil bind on compression.&amp;quot; CAROLINA IN THE MORNING Next stop, Darlington. The SRT8 Charger is the perfect car for this Southern-fried road trip. Only Dodge makes its production cars in the spirit of its Nextel Cup cars--rear-drive and V8-powered. And the SRT8, at 425 hp, is about as close as you can get to NASCAR nirvana. Despite the performance, the car still delivers a respectable 19.4 mpg for the first 345 miles of the dash from Daytona to Darlington. It&amp;#039;s nearly 2 am when I arrive. I fill the Dodge&amp;#039;s tank and then head off to find the nearest available warm bed in Florence, S.C. Darlington Raceway is so unassuming that I almost drive right by. Cathy Elliott, the track&amp;#039;s director of public relations, says, &amp;quot;Darlington has pretty much retained its 1950s charm.&amp;quot; Charming or not, it&amp;#039;s scary as hell to drive. Darlington is famous, or infamous, for its egg shape. At the fat end of the 1.366-mile track, the banking is 25 degrees, at the other end, 23 degrees. The tighter turn has less banking than the wider one. Driving the track right takes more than skill and nerve, it requires experience. In the pre-downforce days, the veterans would stabilize their cars coming off Turn 2 by just grazing the guardrail with the rear quarter of their cars. The rail would leave its mark on the sheetmetal: the Darlington Stripe. It takes major talent and more guts than I have to purposely earn that stripe. Each time I come off the banking on Turn 2, it feels like the wall is jumping out at me at 90 mph--about half the speed Cup drivers are doing there. This is the oldest paved track on the NASCAR circuit. According to Darlington&amp;#039;s president, Jim Hunter, &amp;quot;There were no other asphalt tracks conducting 500-mile races for stock cars when Darlington was built.&amp;quot; Construction began in 1949, 10 years before Daytona opened. Like Daytona, Indy inspired its construction. After seeing a race there, Harold Brasington, who owned a sand and gravel business in Darlington, decided people in the South might enjoy watching a race like that. He reportedly negotiated for the property with landowner Sherman Ramsey over a poker game. The only stipulation was that the track layout couldn&amp;#039;t disturb the minnow pond that Ramsey liked to fish, hence the egg shape. Brasington convinced local construction and roadbuilding expert Gene Willis to move back from Florida and help him build the raceway. His son, Frank Willis, tells me, &amp;quot;He built it by the seat of his pants. They put a bulldozer on the top of the embankment [as an anchor] and ran a cable down to hold the grader while it shaped the curves.&amp;quot; I mentioned Darlington to Ray Evernham when I visited Evernham Motorsports near Charlotte, N.C., and he told me, &amp;quot;The track&amp;#039;s gotten polished in spots, which makes it slick. Up by the wall where the cars haven&amp;#039;t worn it out, there&amp;#039;s grip. So you&amp;#039;ll watch guys slide, slide, slide until they&amp;#039;re a foot from the wall and then boom!--they hook up.&amp;quot; More fun for the drivers. I am so smitten by Darlington that I head right to Homer&amp;#039;s Truck Stop, in Statesville, N.C., to fill the Charger&amp;#039;s tank and bolt on a new front license plate that says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not tailgating. I&amp;#039;m drafting.&amp;quot; NO BAD SEATS Denny Darnell tells me about Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee with the ease, grace and cadence of an antebellum gentleman. As we look down into the concrete bowl, Darnell, the track&amp;#039;s general manager from 1985 to &amp;#039;88, says, &amp;quot;There used to be grass in the middle. In fact, they once played an NFL exhibition game down there.&amp;quot; Bristol is a short track and just about every one of the 160,000 seats offers a good view of the entire oval. But I&amp;#039;ll bet that everyone who was there for the 1995 Goody&amp;#039;s 500 was only using the front edge of his seat at the race&amp;#039;s end: Running second, Dale Earnhardt nudged Terry Labonte at the finish to get by him. Instead, Labonte spun but won anyway, crossing the line sideways. The brainchild of Larry Carrier, a building contractor, Carl Moore, a local politician, and paving company owner R.G. Pope, Bristol Motor Speedway was built purely as a business venture. The track was going to be built in nearby Piney Flats. But, according to Moore, the town didn&amp;#039;t want &amp;quot;bad elements, drinking and gambling and all that stuff.&amp;quot; So the men purchased 100 acres of a dairy farm in Bristol. The cost of the land and all the construction was a mere $600,000. Bristol was paved with asphalt originally and measured a perfect half mile. The turns were banked at 22 degrees. But that lasted only eight years. In 1969 the track was reshaped and the banking was increased to 36 degrees. &amp;quot;Then when they tried to repair any damage to the surface, they found they couldn&amp;#039;t get the asphalt to stay on the track with the high banking,&amp;quot; Darnell says. So the track was repaved with concrete in &amp;#039;92. As I hit that banking in the Charger, I&amp;#039;m compressed down into the seat. Thanks to the 6.1-liter Hemi, I get to feel what it&amp;#039;s like: The g-forces are incredible. &amp;quot;You have the same forces in the middle of the corner at Bristol as you do at Daytona,&amp;quot; team owner Evernham tells me. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve probably got 3 to 3.5 vertical g&amp;#039;s and 1.8 lateral g&amp;#039;s. You really have to have your camber curves and caster splits dialed in.&amp;quot; HOMEWARD BOUND As I leave Bristol, I stop at the Ridgewood Barbecue in nearby Bluff City at Denny Darnell&amp;#039;s suggestion. I&amp;#039;m glad I did: While enjoying the best pulled pork I&amp;#039;ve ever had, I contemplate the last few days. Amazingly, in less than a week, the Charger&amp;#039;s tires have rolled on the sands of Daytona Beach, tackled the banking of Darlington and even left long, black molten streaks on the concrete starting line at Bristol. After making this dash in three days, I also come to fully appreciate the grind of the typical Nextel Cup team--driving to more than 30 races in less than 40 weeks. I also try to fathom the dark art of chassis setup, which varies so greatly and so subtly from track to track. Finally, I am awed by the natural talents and highly honed skills of Cup car drivers. I cannot understand why they are not considered among our nation&amp;#039;s top athletes. With a better appreciation of my own limitations, I turn off the Dodge&amp;#039;s stability control and point its snout toward the twistiest two-laner I can find. DON&amp;#039;T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB It&amp;#039;s not as easy as it looks on television. Not even as easy as fighting freeway traffic, in the rain, during rush hour. Visiting NASCAR tracks is one thing. Driving on them at nearly race speeds is quite another. The Richard Petty Driving Experience (1800bepetty.com) lets you do just that. I signed up for the Rookie Experience, which gives you eight hot laps in a replica Nextel Cup Car. The Petty Experience travels to 23 NASCAR tracks around the country; I take the program at Lowe&amp;#039;s Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C. According to my instructor, Sam Rotunda, these cars are nearly identical to Cup cars. Like the race cars, they weigh about 3400 pounds, have tube-frame chassis, four-speed manual gearboxes and Ford 9-in. rear ends. But the small-block V8s in Petty&amp;#039;s cars have about 600 to 650 hp, while real Cup cars make around 750 to 800. Oh, one other thing: The Petty cars also use fiberglass bodywork--NASCAR mandates metal. After a short classroom session, I&amp;#039;m ready to strap in. Rotunda hooks up my HANS neck restraint, and my butterflies start. I slide my right leg in through the window and onto the floor, and then wiggle the rest of me past the massive roll cage and into the racing seat. The harness is cinched so tightly I can barely move. The engine fires, and with about 2500 rpm showing on the tach, I ease out the heavy clutch and power this beast onto Lowe&amp;#039;s 1.5-mile oval. The Petty Experience is a lead-follow program. Rotunda tells me to maintain three to five car lengths. Figuring out three to five car lengths at 150 mph is a brain twister. Falling behind tells the instructor you&amp;#039;re not comfortable with the speed. I stay close, mirroring his path around the track. The car generates amazing forces in these 24-degree banked corners; it sticks with more confidence than I can conjure. And those g-forces are fatiguing. With each lap taking about half a minute, I&amp;#039;m exhausted by the end of my eight laps. Imagine doing this with Dale Jr. or Tony Stewart on your tail. I can&amp;#039;t. All said and done, I am positive I was doing 180 mph down those straights. The time sheet says different: My best lap averaged 135 mph. Guess I&amp;#039;ll keep on doing what I&amp;#039;m doing for a living after all.--B.S. DARLINGTON RACEWAY Darlington is the oldest and is generally considered the roughest--literally and figuratively--track on the circuit. Drivers still call it &amp;quot;the track too tough to tame.&amp;quot; And it&amp;#039;s not just the odd shape of the track that causes the excitement--the surface presents its own problems. Dale Earnhardt Jr. once claimed the track had seashells mixed into the asphalt--a NASCAR myth. The abrasive material in the surface is from the local aggregate--crushed granite. The granite wears tires quickly, and to compound matters, the friction isn&amp;#039;t the same in every spot of the track. Darlington&amp;#039;s shape and surface make it one of the most difficult tracks for chassis engineers to master. Click on Image to view panorama of Daytona International Speedway. PANARAMA BY CHRIS RAMIREZ DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY The famous trioval was last paved with asphalt during the 1970s. Florida&amp;#039;s sunny skies and warm weather have kept the racetrack in good condition. The original paving mixture contained iron filings to increase adhesion. The 30-year-old surface is bumpy but still in good shape. However, years of rubber buildup and surface polishing from the tires pose a challenge. &amp;quot;Daytona is getting slicker and slicker,&amp;quot; says Kasey Kahne, who drives the No. 9 Dodge Nextel Cup car. &amp;quot;You race a lot differently there than at other tracks because you&amp;#039;re drafting. You need the right guys around you and you need to be in the right spot on the track to make a run on somebody.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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