Atlanta inherits a weekend that's not always easy sell

For decades it was viewed as one of the highest of NASCAR's high holidays, a Labor Day weekend that was synonymous with one race and one place. In hindsight, everything looks so perfect, so glorious. It seems simple -- turn back the clock, reunite Labor Day with Darlington Raceway and its re-christened Southern 500, and everybody is happy again.

But as is so often the case, all that longing for the good old days can overshadow just how problematic and difficult those days could be.

Time to face facts: Regardless of the racetrack, Labor Day weekend has been a burden for some time now. The people who pine for a return to Darlington conveniently forget about how that race failed to sell out for five of its final six incarnations -- this at a track with just 60,000 seats -- the exception being the final Labor Day Southern 500 in 2003, when everyone came to wave goodbye.

Oh sure, it all seems so romantic now. But Labor Day at Darlington wasn't always as warm and fuzzy as some remember it to be. There were too many 100-degree days, too many tropical storm warnings, too many steamy Sunday afternoons where sitting in those metal seats felt like baking in a convection oven.

So off it went, west to Southern California and what seemed like a sure thing. NASCAR's biggest market. A track that hadn't had so much as an empty seat in its first seven years. But somebody overestimated the demand. Somebody forgot to look at weather trends. Nobody realized that Fontana can feel more like Phoenix than Los Angeles. And suddenly a can't-miss prospect turned into an embarrassment, a major-market race weekend in stifling 110-degree conditions that kept people away in droves.

Labor Day seemed like a blessing to Auto Club Speedway. It turned out to be a curse for a facility that's still looking for its first sellout since 2003.

And now, it's Atlanta's turn. The release of the 2009 Sprint Cup schedule involved a shakeup that entailed Atlanta Motor Speedway essentially trading its fall weekend for California's Labor Day race, with Talladega Superspeedway's second event moving back a few weeks to accommodate the swap.

Both California and Atlanta, two facilities with a history of attendance issues, had been lobbying NASCAR for date changes. Atlanta sees enough potential in Labor Day weekend that it traded a Chase race -- something almost every track wants -- for a Sunday night event. (Continued)