Mike

Ball

Read Mike's bio and previous columns here

February 25, 2008

NASCAR: The Real American Pastime

All right everybody, it’s time to toss Sis, Mom, Granny, Cousin Elmer, Emmy-Sue and the young-uns into the old Ford pickup, grab a couple of cases of Budweiser, scream “Yeeeeeee-Hah!”  and head on down in the general direction of Talladega . . .

NASCAR’s back!

Last weekend, the Daytona 500 marked the beginning of a new season of watching Tony Stewart put Kurt Busch into the wall in turn four – or vice versa – and I could not be happier.

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing is an undeniably American sports institution. It was born in 1948 on the sand at Daytona Beach, Florida, when a bunch of mostly-retired moonshine runners decided to go out and swap paint on their post-war Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, Ford, Hudson, Kaiser, Lincoln, Mercury and Oldsmobile street cars.

For years, NASCAR drivers would grab cars right out of the showroom, tweak the engines and tires a little, then hit the track. In fact, some of them would rent cars for the weekend – presumably remembering to scribble their initials in the little blank on the rental form to buy the optional collision insurance.

In those days you could go out to the track and see Junior Johnson or Fireball Roberts banging around in almost exactly the same car you might take into town on Saturday to go banging around in the IGA supermarket parking lot. I guess it was supposed to make you feel better about driving a car with a steering wheel the size and weight of hula hoop.

These days, things have changed a bit. The cars you see every weekend running on the super speedways resemble your family ride about as much as an F-18 resembles a parakeet.

Every single part of a modern NASCAR race car is carefully engineered for racing, with the perfect balance of weight and strength. This is so the cars can turn lap speeds around 200 miles per hour, then crush like Coors Light cans and fly into a million festive pieces when they hit a wall.

Of course, there are other forms of auto racing. For example, the Indy-style open-wheel cars compete mostly on the same high-speed banked oval tracks as NASCAR, only they travel a bit faster and fly apart into more and smaller pieces.

And then, pretty much at the opposite end of the motor sports spectrum, you’ll find Formula One. In Formula One, the most advanced open-wheeled cars in the world run on intricate road courses, while NASCAR races mostly involve mashing down the accelerator and turning left.

Formula One drivers are relentlessly international, dapper little guys, with names like Jean-Jacques or Nigel, who speak at least eight languages fluently. Most NASCAR drivers are as American as a six-pack, with names like Kyle or Darryl, and some of them just barely speak English.

Now I will admit that I am a huge fan of Formula One racing. But I have to say that if you have as much as a drop of American blood in your veins, you can not help loving NASCAR – especially those drivers. These are guys who will put their lives on the line and compete for millions of dollars, then hang out in the infield and eat corn dogs with their wives and kids. They will walk away from a major engine meltdown and wreck, then grin and tell the television interviewer, “Yep, she blowed up real good.”

Bear in mind that while modern NASCAR drivers might say “y’all” now and then and prefer a pitcher of whatever happens to be on draft over a magnum of Dom Perignon, in order to be competitive in their sport they are probably as well-educated in their own way as any mechanical engineer on the planet.

You know, I really could go on and on about NASCAR and my heroes, but I won’t. You see, the Auto Club 500 is fixin’ to start any minute now . . .

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.