Darlington. For almost seventy years it has been the track “to tough to tame”. The Lady In Black. The place where Ricky Craven beat Kurt Busch to the line by 0.002 of a second, a tie for the closest finish in history. The place where Jimmie Johnson won team owner Rick Hendrick his 200th victory. A place of many mile stones.

This year, Darlington broke the tracks record for the most cautions, with 18! That is crazy. For Labor Day weekend’s throwback event, Nascar gave the field a special new car setup. One that made tires an extremely important factor. Fans and drivers alike loved it.

Brad Keslowski started on the pole, and led for over a hundred and seventy laps. However, he was not alone up front. The new setup seemed to make it so that he couldn’t pull away from the field. So he was constantly battling Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch and others for the lead.

Another interesting factor that the cautions provided was the fact that drivers who had problems rarely, if ever, fell a lap off the pace. And if they did it wasn’t hard to make up. For example, Carl Edwards blew a tire early in the race and fell two laps off the pace. Edwards managed to get back on the lead lap with relative ease. Not a normal occurrence.

All race long cautions flew, and varying strategies came into play. Tires were important, because after just six laps fresh tires would give a driver a startling advantage. Thus, drivers often came to pit road. However, each driver had just 12-13 sets of tires, so they had to be careful with how often they used them. The varying strategies offered several drivers the chance to lead.

Ironic as it is, the longest green flag run happened right before the end of the race. Brad Keslowski was in the lead, and Kevin Harvick was right behind him. Lap after lap the two battled. Harvick had the better car, but Keslowski had the lead. As the two battled an orange and white car slowly appeared in their rear-view mirrors. Carl Edwards had recovered from his flat tire and drove right past Kevin. But like Harvick, he couldn’t seem to pass Brad. Harvick passed Carl right back, and continued to chase Brad. Suddenly, with ten or so laps left, a caution flew.

All the drivers came to pit road, but they didn’t exit in the same order as they came in. Carl Edwards managed to pass both Harvick and Keslowski with a lightning fast pit stop. Harvick lined up fifth for the restart, and Brad restarted third, because he was passed on pit road by Denny Hamlin, Edwards’ teammate.

Carl led the field to green, and quickly blocked Hamlin on the outside. Then he dove to the inside, blocking Keslowski. Edwards tried to stretch his lead over Hamlin, but Denny stayed within a second of him. As the white flag flew Edwards was in the lead, and Denny and Brad were to busy fighting for second to have a chance at Edwards.

Carl Edwards, who had blown tire and gone two laps down, had won the Southern 500. Wow. Edwards was ecstatic after the victory, openly praising Nascar for the new setup, and stating he would love to race it again in the future. It was Edwards’ second win this year. His first came in the Coca-Cola 600, so he has won two of this year’s major races. That is worth doing a back flip over, which he did.