Kurt Busch wheeled his red Ford Expedition onto the track at Darlington Raceway and immediately headed for the new SAFER barriers on the wall in the middle of turns 1 and 2.

“It’ll have an impact here in the center of the corner,” Busch said as he cruised within a foot of the SAFER (Steel and Foam Energy Reduction) barriers more commonly known as soft walls.

“The racing line is right here. It’ll take away a little bit of impact, but you won’t notice it because you start heading down the racetrack.”

Busch then headed toward the exit of Turn 2 at about 50 miles per hour, well under the track record qualifying speed of 173.797 mph.

“You’ll scrape the side right on these hash marks coming off Turn 1,” he said. “Then you’ll slide right back up toward the wall where they’ve closed it off and we’re back to regular concrete, so the impact will be minimal on the exit of the corner of (Turn) 2.”

Busch was the first driver to get a close-up look at the new walls and the potential new racing lines that will result with 30 inches gone from a track that many drivers said already was too tight.

Ricky Craven, who beat Busch in last year’s Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 by two-thousandths of a second, later took a spin around the track where a driver seldom escapes a brush with the wall and collects the infamous “Darlington stripe” down the side of his car.

Everybody else gets to see it Friday when drivers begin preparing for Sunday’s 400-mile race with two practice sessions and qualifying.

Some drivers, such as Mark Martin, already have expressed concern that there won’t be enough room to race side by side on this egg-shaped slice of real estate nicknamed “The Track Too Tough To Tame.”

“Once they come down and analyze it they won’t have that perspective,” Busch said. “They’ll see the changes are for the positive and they’ll be able to compete and race here side by side.

“We’ll know we’re missing 30 inches, but when we come back in the fall we won’t even know the barriers are here.”

Busch then proceeded down the backstretch. He pointed toward the concrete wall that has taken a pounding over the past 50 years.

“It’s been hit so many times that it isn’t straight,” he said.

As Busch sped down the front straightaway toward the start-finish line, he glanced at the barriers down the front side of pit road and then looked ahead toward Turn 1 again.

“It’s going to be a little more congested on a restart, but drivers will adjust and it’ll be minimal impact,” he said.

Craven agreed.

“I can certainly see it’s going to be a little tighter going into the corner,” he said. “What we’ve done is take some of the track away, and there wasn’t a lot to start with.

“It’s going to be an issue in the middle of the corner and maybe a little on the exits. Otherwise, it’s not a lot different. They’ve done a great job of transitioning, especially into the corners.”

That’s not to suggest the track won’t be tougher than ever. Both agreed the new walls will add a new meaning to the “Darlington stripe.”

“The potential is there for a lot more Darlington stripes,” Craven said.

That doesn’t make those who haven’t seen the walls less apprehensive.

Elliott Sadler said he plans to come a day early to see the walls even if he can’t get on the track with a car.

“I already wear out a right side every time I go to Darlington,” he said. “Ain’t no telling how bad I’ll mess it up this time.

“That’s a track that you’ve got to have good rhythm at. You kind of know when you leave pit road where you want to run at, how much throttle you want to use. Now that they’ve taken half the track away we don’t really know what we’re going to do.”