Whether it came by accident or was the end result of a great plan by NASCAR officials doesn’t matter. The bottom line is The Lady in Black is doing just fine these days.

When NASCAR stripped the old girl of the Southern 500 in favor of a race on Mother’s Day weekend, very few people who regularly report on the sport thought that was the beginning of a rebirth for NASCAR’s oldest track. It was believed the move was NASCAR’s way of putting Darlington out of its misery by setting it up to fail.

With a couple of half-full houses, it’s a good bet the track’s one remaining race would have been awarded to another track. A funny thing happened on the way to the scrap yard, though. Fans came. They filled the stands and proved to money-hungry NASCAR honchos that history and tradition mean quite a bit in this sport.

“Man, we’ve got to have Darlington,” Fox analyst Darrell Waltrip said this past week. “It’s part of what we are. You can’t shut that track down. Now what they’ve got to do is get the Southern 500 back.”

Why not? The egg-shaped track has a shiny new surface that, according to early returns, will make the racing even better. Officials would not have approved such an expenditure if NASCAR hadn’t assured them the track was going to remain on the schedule.

And here’s the one question I must ask you: Where would you rather watch a Sprint Cup race on Labor Day weekend, in Kansas or at Darlington? Each track has just one event, so how hard would it be to switch the dates?

Darlington belongs in the Chase. Period.