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CONCORD -- They came from miles around for the first one, about 20 miles give or take.

And that was about all anyone could've hoped for given the circumstances. The inaugural World 600 had already been postponed from its May 20, 1960 original date because, well, the track wasn't completed in time. Those who were there a month later would argue that it wasn't completed then, either.

The fact that we're here for a 50th year of racing at Charlotte Motor Speedway says more about racing than it does the speedway itself. The first race was so bad, the cars had to be draped with mesh screen over the grill to keep rocks from puncturing the radiators. And then the fights started.

All these years later, almost no one has figured it out yet.

That we're going to run 600 miles today for the 50th running of the longest of stock-car races flies in the face of reason and sensibility. That we've always run 600 miles on this day says more about the fans who keep pouring in than the sense of the sport itself. All these years later, the Coca-Cola 600 still makes no sense. The race is a swirling maelstrom of personalities and arguments and adjustments and settlements that have lasted 50 years with nothing more than an original idea and a series of improvements.

The fights continue just as the brainstorm has endured. O. Bruton Smith, the track owner, is still fighting with H.A. Humpy Wheeler, his former promoter, over how their relationship ended a year ago this week. Smith said Wheeler owes him apology. Wheeler said Smith shouldn't hold his breath.

They'll run the Indianapolis 500 today, and the talking helmets will tell us how marvelous it is and how nothing compares and blah, blah, blah. The truth is, Charlotte long ago passed Indy in importance and significance, and neither comes close to what will happen this morning in Monte Carlo, where the Monaco Grand Prix will be held in its own orbit.

The incredible thing isn't that the 600 surpassed Indy, despite the Brickyard's 49-year head start, but that Charlotte worked at all. When winner Joe Lee Johnson came across the finish line a month late in 1960 to win the first 600-mile race in stock-car history, the lawyers began lining up. When the dust settled, and the owners of the complex looked out on what was left of their track, they saw potholes and pebbles and rocks and dirt and crevices and granite stones scattered all over what was once black asphalt but looked instead like a gray crater formed by a meteorite.

It was also about that time that several of the drivers walked up to the old "pay window" and were told they'd been disqualified for illegally entering pit road, Richard Petty and Junior Johnson among them.

"It was a real mess," Petty said.

It got worse when someone threatened the poor guy inside the booth. Legend has it that he slipped out a back door and began to run. To this day, the official rundown shows Petty, Johnson, Lee Petty, Bob Welborn, Paul Lewis and Lennie Page as being disqualified from the inaugural World 600.

The long history of the event and the track itself is littered with fights and lawsuits and divorce proceedings and buyouts and leveraged takeovers and bankruptcy hearings and power struggles that should've swallowed up the entire premise and left the land to its initial purpose, which was a pitiful rock quarry that wasn't worth the effort to mine.

The power struggles between original owners Smith and Curtis Turner gave way to struggles with creditors and ex-wives and promoters through the years, spilling into this weekend when Smith answered questions about Wheeler, who was in Indy and firing statements back at Smith about net worth and retirement packages.

"I was better to Humpy than any other person in my life," Smith said Saturday during an odd press conference inside the speedway media center. "I was better to him than my brothers."

"All I ever wanted was dignity and respect from him," Wheeler said in a statement from Indianapolis. "I never thought of myself as an employee but was a partner. He didn't see it that way."

"I think with some of the things that have been said, I think one day an apology will be in order," Smith said. "I made Humpy a lot of money. Humpy's net worth is about $26 million now."

"While I wish I was worth what he said I was, it simply isn't true. I don't know where he got those numbers," Wheeler said. "It's too bad it ended this way, but I have nothing to apologize for."

And so it goes. The 600 endures in spite of many things, but its core value is the friction that drives the sport and draws the fans. More than 150,000 people will come from miles around to watch a race that might end tonight, and it might end Monday and it might end a month from now.

But the idea will never end, as crazy as it was to begin with.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com