We tell you all you need to know about stock car racing.
There’s a specter of sorts in the sports world that you and I can no longer ignore. From the South it rises — loud, rich, and obnoxious — into your television, your backyard, and your poor eardrums. No, it’s not Lee Corso or a lost, drunk ’Bama fan. The phantasmagoric figure is NASCAR, and it’s becoming less and less like a ghost and more like a big, loud uncle that you simply can’t get away from.
In the new millennium, NASCAR has grown from a simple, dismissible redneck fest into a multibillion-dollar fan-fest that is slowly climbing its way up the East Coast. As “Big Bill” France’s grandson, Brian France, continues his revolutionary approach to the sport as the new president of NASCAR, television ratings are at an all-time high, the governing board is pursuing a track near New York, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., is gracing the cover of “Rolling Stone.” Before NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, not Southern twang for ‘nice car’) was called NASCAR, a loose group of former and current moonshiners raced along beaches and dirt tracks in the hope of an elusive purse. (The race sponsors often ran away before the checkered flag, keeping the pot for themselves.) When “Big Bill” France came along in the late 1940s, he was simply the trustworthy sponsor who always paid up with his prize monies. As his respect among drivers grew, he expanded on his honesty to build a circuit of races to be governed by his new organization, NASCAR.
Thus began a great family tradition that still belongs to his grandson, Brian France. Today’s NASCAR is characterized by unprecedented corporate sponsorship — 106 Fortune500 companies participate — and a huge $2.4 billion TV contract, and by growth from the South into other regions of American thought. With drivers like Juan Pablo Montoya and Jean Girard making their appearances on tracks in Las Vegas and California, corporate sponsors and concerned liberals are taking notice of this new, rabid sport.
The recent blockbuster, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” starring Will Farrell, gives Hollywood credence to the massively popular sport. And Ben A. Shackleford in his article entitled, “Masculinity, Hierarchy, and the Auto Racing Fraternity: The Pit Stop as a Celebration of Social Roles,” in the journal, “Men and Masculinities,” gives scholarly credence to the sport. Heck, even the “New Yorker” and “Fortune” published pieces on the economic credibility of the corporate sponsorship of the sport.
But despite all this, the simple fact of the sport remains: forty to forty-five cars drive 200 times around an oval track making left turns for four and a half hours. Yeah, sounds something like hypnosis or a sleeping treatment to me. In fact, I remember, as a youth on Sunday afternoons, my family would gather around the tube to watch the Staples or the Pepsi or the GoDaddy.com or the [insert company here] 500, and I would infallibly fall asleep on the ostensibly comfortable carpet about two laps after hearing the national anthem, which, I must say, is usually very well done and perhaps the best part of the show. Then a few hours later, I would wake to see the SportsCenter coverage of the winner of the afternoon’s race being showered in Gatorade. This, though, was not the best part of the highlight reel.
Crashes:
A crash in NASCAR can be described in roughly two ways, a yellow flag or the Big One. A ‘yellow flag’ crash makes reference to the ‘caution’ laps that occur after a car is bumped or just simply loses control and spins into the infield (the grassy part in the middle for all you New Englanders), but due to the tediously boring nature of such ‘yellow flag’ crashes, I must focus on the Big One.
The Big One generally occurs on tracks that are between a half-mile to a mile and a half in length. On these tracks, the line of cars stretches the entire length of the track creating one continuous circle of blazing fast death machines. As one driver makes one simple mistake, an overcompensation to the bump from another driver or a subtle miscue in a curve, disaster strikes. First, sparks fly as the car slams into the outer wall of the straightaway. Then, entering the 35 degree banked curves, the car begins to slide back down into the grind of the other cars. One, two, three cars collide and flip into the disabled car and metal and smoke begin to fly from the cars in all directions. Reduced visibility translates into increased excitement as 5 or 10 or 20 other cars pile and fly and catapult into the air in the massive explosion of metal, cars, and fire.
The Big One doesn’t last long, and, assuming no one is hurt, it warrants thousands of replays on YouTube the following night. (If you’re curious, just search ‘Bristol big wreck’ and you’ll see what I mean.) It’s unbelievably exhilarating to watch big, bad machines plow into each other in some sort of destruction derby, but other than that, the sport is quite mundane. True, if you’re at the track, the loud noise commands and enthralls you for a few minutes, maybe even a few hours, but the eardrum torture can only last so long, at which point it becomes, well, torture. I must admit that if I ever watch an entire NASCAR race, it is simply to catch the wrecks as they happen, live and unedited. I wish that I could identify with with my fellow Southerners in a true appreciation of the racing oval, but quite honestly, I’d rather catch the wrecks on SportsCenter.
But in the spirit of “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” of the early 60s, there is some sort of spiritual beauty to be seen in this completely unorganic world of corporations, $75,000 engines, and twanging Earnhardts. When 350,000 people gather to chant with the religious fervor and repetition of the pagans at machines which drive circles around a gathering of royal, rich RV owners in the infield, something spiritual happens. Actually, no. Nothing spiritual occurs. It’s just a bunch of rowdy, screaming, drunk rednecks who’d rather see Dale, Jr., win the Nextel Cup than see Jesus return.
Branden Adams ’11 (badams@fas) would rather see Jesus win the Nextel Cup.