New Recordholder Tames Darlington, Beats Old Qualifying Record by 5.7 Miles an Hour

Greg Biffle after putting down a monster lap at the "track too tough to tame" during qualifying for the Dodge Challenger 500 at Darlington Raceway. Biffle put his Ford Fusion on the pole (first of 2008, 5th of his 197 race Sprint Cup career) with a speed of 179.442 miles an hour, beating the past record of Ward Burton, set in March 1996, 173.797 miles an hour. Dale Earnhardt Jr. starts 2nd...and after wadding up two Chad Knaus prepared race cars...Jimmie Johnson, the defending Sprint Cup Champion, will start 3rd. The top forty-one qualifying times were faster than Ward's previous record.

Maybe the most important team members this weekend will be those who pound out the dents...followed closely by the shock and suspension guys...and of course the crew chiefs, who'll need to orchestrate changes over the 501 mile race distance.

The "Iron Maiden"--The 'claw' in the open air "Room of Doom"

Greetings from the Darlington Raceway, a/k/a the track "Too Tough To Tame". What you see here is the template for the new spec "winged wonder" NASCAR Sprint Cup Series vehicle. If you don't conform to those specs, you will lose some serious cash, and perhaps get some time away from the track.

We helped with some radio pool reporting this morning and got a chance to talk with Greg Biffle, who says this track is even tougher to drive than last year. The cars are three seconds faster, which is a significant amount. Biffle says there may be some dust-ups on track Saturday night. The weather forecast does not call for the rain like that which we drove through this morning. How tough? Jimmie Johnson, the defending Sprint Cup Champion, is now practicing in his back-up Lowe's Chevy...after crunching up the rear of his primary machine. The field gets another practice before the pole qualifying later this afternoon.

Biffle's comments on three seconds faster need some perspective. If, say, you were the last car on the lead lap and you run laps of 60 seconds (for illustration, they're faster here) it would take a car that was running laps of 57 seconds 21 laps to catch and pass the last car (running 60 seconds), and put that car a lap down. So the next time you're at a race...take out the old stopwatch and time the car that runs last. Then time the car that runs first. That will put this in terms you can see and understand.

More later.