The Voice Of NASCAR has seen it all at Darlington over the years

By: Rusty Ray | SCNow
Published: May 08, 2009

For nearly 50 years, Barney Hall has covered NASCAR racing at Darlington Raceway for radio listeners across the country, and around the world.

But he hasn't always had the best seat in the house.

At his first Darlington race on assignment, Hall remembers being assigned to cover the infield, which in those days, was not as easy as it is now.

"You were tied to a telephone connection," Hall remembered on Friday inside the gleaming, state-of-the-art Motor Racing Network mobile compound at Darlington Raceway. "Like a dog on a leash,you could only go 7 or 8 feet."

Hall also remembers when the old frontstretch (the current backstretch) was all covered grandstands, and radio announcers were perched on top of the blazing hot tin roof.

"They just put plywood out for you to walk on," Hall said. "It was nothing more than a tin roof over a plywood deal, and that was the Governor's Suite. There was chicken wire to keep people out. I thought I was going to the broadcast booth, but someone said, 'no, that's the Governor's Suite.'"

But even though Hall now takes his seat in broadcast booths in more than 20 of NASCAR's elite raceways across the country each year, he admits his mind isn't always on the action going on right in front of him, especially at Darlington.

"A lot of times, the race has been so exciting at Darlington, I almost feel like when I went in the booth upstairs, I almost felt like telling my broadcast partner, 'here, you do this, I want to watch this thing.'"

With the host of changes at Darlington over the years: lights, new pavement, new seating, and a string of sellouts, Hall knows fans are quick to embrace the track as an integral stop on the NASCAR circuit.

"Once the fans realized, hey, we could lose both races, and not have any racing at Darlington at all," he said. "That's when they said, you know, we need to go to Darlington to see what we need to do to get this thing changed."

"Not only is it fun to come and watch, it's fun to be here," he said.