DARLINGTON, S.C. — The stands were empty. The streets were sparse. But after two months of silence, the sound of 40 engines wheeling through the turns of Darlington Raceway was the sweetest of noises.
NASCAR returned to the track Sunday at Darlington after an eight-week pandemic-induced layoff, and it was a welcome return to something that looked kind of like normalcy … as long as you focused on just the track, and nothing else.
Like the rest of the country, NASCAR shut down in mid-March, just days before it was scheduled to run its Atlanta race. But as states near NASCAR’s hub of Charlotte began looking toward relaxing restrictions on gatherings and operations, plans began to develop about how to bring racing back.