The Golden Age of NASCAR

Stock car racing now rivals football and baseball as the country’s most popular spectator sport. What’s the appeal?

How did NASCAR start?
Stock car racing grew out of moonshine running in the Appalachian and Great Smoky mountains in the 1930s. Bootleggers would soup up their cars so they could outrun the feds. Racing those souped-up cars proved so much fun that organized races began to crop up all over the South. In those early races, many of the tracks were uneven and unsafe, and each one had its own rules. Race promoter Bill France Sr. thought the sport would be more attractive to fans if it were better organized. So he set rules that governed a distinct racing season, with a single champion being crowned each year. In 1948, France founded the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing in Daytona Beach, Fla. The Daytona 500, NASCAR’s most famous race, still kicks off the season each year.

So it’s a Southern sport?
The sport still draws heavily from among good ol’ boys with crankcase oil on their foreheads, but NASCAR racetracks have sprung up all over the country, from California to Pennsylvania to Michigan. Twenty percent of the fans are now in the Northeast, and 19 percent in the West. Overall, the crowd is 10 percent black, 10 percent Latino, and 40 percent female. Total attendance for the largest group of races—the Winston Cup Series—was 6.7 million in 2002, with an average attendance of 186,000 fans per race. On television that year, only pro football drew more overall spectators. All told, 75 million people identify themselves as NASCAR fans—the second-largest audience after the National Football League.

What attracts them?
As in any sport, fans develop attachments to specific competitors, and rooting gives them an emotional investment in the races. Drivers such as Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. all have huge followings. Aficionados also come to perceive the complex dance of skill, strategy, and raw courage in each race; only a few hundredths of a second can separate the winner from the also-rans. Danger, of course, provides an added frisson: At any moment, an accident or mere bump of fenders can cause a car to hurtle out of control. Drivers can and do die. “These are modern-day gladiators in those cars,” says ESPN racing reporter Jerry Punch.

What’s it like at the track?
Dirty, very noisy, and exciting. The air is full of grimy exhaust that settles in a fine film on spectators’ skin. The roar of engines is deafening. To get the full NASCAR experience, you have to rent headphones and a radio tuned to the frequencies of your favorite driver. That way you can listen in on the conversations among the driver, spotter, and crew chief, as they discuss when it’s time to pull out of the line of cars and pass, and when it’s best to make a pit stop for fuel and new tires.

How fast do the cars go?
They average about 188 mph on qualifying laps. In these solo runs around an empty track, drivers compete for one of the 43 slots in each race, as well as for the better starting positions when the race starts. During the race itself, the drivers’ speed depends on the track and the weather. Smaller tracks, with short straightaways, generally see average speeds of 130 mph, while the superspeedways in Charlotte or Daytona are raced at 190 mph and above.

Can I drive my car that fast?
No. The cars in stock car racing haven’t been true stock cars—that is, regular passenger cars off the showroom floor—for decades. Over the years, modifications have been introduced for speed and safety. Today, the 8-cylinder engines pump out as much as 750 horsepower—more than triple the average passenger car. The cars’ bodies are specially strengthened to withstand high-speed crashes, with a steel cage surrounding the driver. There’s no glass to shatter. And the doors don’t open—the driver slides into the car through the window hole. But stock cars still look recognizably like Fords and Chevys—unlike the sleek, aerodynamic race cars that compete in Formula 1 or the Indy 500.

Is there really any skill involved?
Because NASCAR requires the stock cars to conform to rigorous regulations, all the machines are pretty much equal. This means each race is a test of the driver, pit crew, and strategy. A key factor in every race is “drafting,” the art of using cars in front of you to break the wind resistance, so you can go faster on less fuel. (It’s one reason cars usually race around the track in a line, each one traveling in the slipstream of the preceding cars.) To take advantage of drafting, a driver will often form temporary partnerships with another driver behind him, an arrangement usually worked out over the radio in negotiations between drivers’ spotters. Of course, every driver is competing against every other, so a partnership may last only a lap or two, even if the drivers are close friends. But it’s this constantly shifting balance between cooperation and competition that makes the sport so unpredictable and so interesting to its fans.

The death of Dale Earnhardt
Dale Earnhardt may not have been the all-time greatest NASCAR racer—that honor is usually given to Richard Petty—but he was certainly the most beloved. His aggressive driving won him the nickname “the Intimidator,” and many fans simply called him “No. 3,” for the number he always wore. Earnhardt won seven Winston Cup Series championships, but tried and failed 19 times to win the Daytona 500. He didn’t win it until 1998, on his 20th try—but then he won spectacularly, taking the lead with 60 laps to go. In 2001, on the final turn of the final lap of the Daytona 500, Earnhardt was in fourth position and tried to pass using his trademark bump maneuver, in which he would nudge the car ahead just slightly so it would ride up the bank of the track and out of his way. This time, he slammed into the wall and died instantly of head injuries. His death came before an audience of 30 million TV viewers, sending the entire sport into months of mourning. Many analysts think Earnhardt’s death actually enhanced NASCAR’s popularity. One sportscaster said it was as dramatic as if Michael Jordan had dropped dead on the court in the final minutes of an NBA championship game.