Darlington Raceway’s first annual NACAR weekend moves to an earlier spring date this season after falling in mid-May the last four years. This will be the first April weekend at the 1.366-mile oval since 2014. NASCAR moved the Southern 500 back to Labor Day weekend in 2015 at “The Track Too Tough To Tame.”

In the sport's infancy, NASCAR did not take a single step from the sands of Daytona Beach or the clay of the Carolinas to the biggest and fastest speedways on Earth. Once upon a time, before tracks like Daytona or Talladega could be conceived much less dreamed of,