During the Prohibition era of the 1920’s and early 30’s, the
\nundercover business of whiskey, or “moonshine”, running began to boom.
\nMore of a problem than secret manufacture of moonshine was the secret
\ntransportation of it. The common term for moonshine runners was
\n“bootleggers”. Bootleggers were “men who illegally ran whiskey from
\nhidden stills to hundreds of markets across the Southeast. These men
\nwere the real Dukes of Hazzard, only there was nothing funny about
\ntheir business. Driving at high speeds at night, often with the police
\nin pursuit, was dangerous. The penalty for losing the race was jail or
\nloss of livelihood.”<\/strong><\/p>\nAs bootlegging boomed, the drivers began to race among themselves to
\nsee who had the fastest cars. Bootleggers raced on Sunday afternoons
\nand then used the same car to haul moonshine Sunday night. Inevitably,
\npeople came to see the races, and racing moonshine cars became
\nextremely popular in the backroads of the South. Bootlegging continued
\neven after the end of the Prohibition era, because of the huge tax
\nplaced on whiskey upon repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 1938 a man named William H.G. “Bill” France organized
\na race on the wide, firm sands of Daytona Beach, Florida. The winner
\nreceived such items as a bottle of rum, a box of cigars, and a case of
\nmotor oil (precursors to present-day sponsor involvement in the sport)
\n– NASCAR history had begun. France was a visionary; he realized for
\nstock car racing to grow, an official organization had to exist to list
\nchampions, keep statistics, and memorialize records and record-holders.<\/p>\n
The outbreak of World War II brought stock car racing to a halt. The
\ndrivers went to war and the production of new cars ceased. At the end
\nof the war, some drivers came back and ran occasional, haphazard races
\nat places like the beach at Daytona.<\/p>\n
By 1947, Bill France realized it was high time for a national
\nsanctioning body to govern stock car racing. On December 12 of that
\nyear he gathered promoters from the Southeast, Northeast, and Midwest
\nto the Ebony Bar atop the Streamline Inn at Daytona. Over the next
\nthree days rules were drawn and specifications agreed upon. The name of
\nthe organization would by NASCAR- the National Association for Stock
\nCar Auto Racing.<\/p>\n
It was then that NASCAR first began to become an actual “sport”.
\nThese were the formative years during which it would come into its own
\nas a true sport.\u00a0 While its participants played the role of both
\nowner and driver, these guys now had an organization they were
\naffiliated with.\u00a0 In its fledgling years, drivers would frequently
\ndrive their stock cars, replete with stock radios and stock air
\nconditioning, to the tracks and then race the very cars that had gotten
\nthem there.<\/p>\n
Gradually, it became more and more technical.\u00a0 Eventually, tending
\nto the cars, making them faster, and competing in races became a
\nfull-time job for most of the drivers.\u00a0 More money was required to
\ncompete effectively, more specialized mechanics and automotive
\nknowledge was needed to keep the cars running well.<\/p>\n
By the time the early 90’s rolled around, it was virtually impossible
\nto own and race a car.\u00a0 As a result, you began to see drivers come
\ntogether and form teams like Dale Earnhardt Incorporated and Roush
\nRacing.\u00a0 They were coming to the forefront to sponsor and fund
\nmultiple drivers.\u00a0 Almost all the participants involved were part
\nof a larger team that financed the whole effort.\u00a0 It’s estimated
\nthat the cost of running a competitive NASCAR team these days is in the
\ntens of millions of dollars per year; hundreds of thousands of which
\nare dedicated to time in the NASCAR Research and Development Center’s
\nwind tunnels in the off-season, refining curves on the bodies of the
\ncars.<\/p>\n
The technical aspects and team element added a whole new
\ndimension\u00a0 to the sport because now, instead of having a bunch of
\npsychopaths bent on winning the race and accentuating machismo, these
\npsychopaths were bound together as teammates.\u00a0 Instead of winning
\nat all costs, we’ve started to see people actually having to work
\ntogether to win races.\u00a0 Now, almost as much as performance and
\nskill, winning a race is a matter of staying on good terms with the
\ndrivers you’re stuck in a pack with.\u00a0 Any given NASCAR race is a
\nwonderful collision of team work, physics mastery and personal skill at
\nhigh speeds.\u00a0 It’s very common now to see two drivers on the same
\nteam pair up to win a race.\u00a0 One extra second in the pits, one
\nminute detail forgotten, is all that separates first place from sixth
\nor eighth or twenty first.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, it’s this complexity and shift towards teamwork and loyalty
\nthat killed Dale Earnhardt four years ago at the Daytona 500.<\/p>\n
As the race ended, he tried to fend off the rabid pack of racers behind
\nhim so that his teammates, Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr.,
\ncould put Dale Earnhardt Incorporated in the 1 and 2 positions at the
\nend of the race.\u00a0 Had he found himself in the same spot 10 years
\nbefore, he’d have been concentrating on winning the race himself.
\nAs it happened, he was able to help his teammate and his son win the
\nrace at the cost of his own life.\u00a0 He was put into the wall of
\nturn four on the last lap of the Daytona 500, killing him
\ninstantly.<\/p>\n
{mosimage}<\/p>\n
These days, it’s becoming less and less “redneck” to be interested in
\nor participate in the sport, and that makes me happy.\u00a0 Jeff Gordon
\neven made it onto Saturday Night Live in 2002 as a host.\u00a0 Surely
\nthis signifies that larger, more mainstream audiences are out
\nthere.\u00a0 Overwhelmingly, we’re starting to see NASCAR as an
\norganization put down its ten gallon hat, oversized belt buckles and
\nwreckless abandon in hurling drivers through turns so that it may
\ninstead adopt a more European, more refined and more precise approach
\nto racing.\u00a0 The focus is shifting to speed and efficiency, rather
\nthan twisted metal and glory.<\/p>\n
I suspect that even if I’m teased for the rest of my life over my love
\nof the sport, it won’t diminish my enjoyment of it.\u00a0 For me, the
\nthings that really draw me to it are almost exclusively sensory.
\nThe speed, the finesse, the sound and the subtle nuance of watching
\nsomeone who is truly gifted take that car 500 miles to victory is just
\na wonder to behold.\u00a0 I’m absolutely in awe of the mastery of
\nphysics and teamwork it takes to win a race these days.\u00a0 The petty
\ndrama is fun to watch as well, I’ll admit.\u00a0 At times, it’s like The Sopranos<\/em>
\nwith cars.\u00a0 I see a dispute arise between two drivers one week and
\nI just cannot wait to see how it plays out the next.\u00a0 I can barely
\ndrive my car close to a concrete barrier in a construction zone on the
\ninterstate without cringing a little, yet these guys are 6 inches apart
\non 40 degree banked turns and they’re pushing 190mph… Jesus Christ, I
\ncan’t get enough of it!\u00a0 I live for it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,352],"tags":[68,353],"class_list":["post-2479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cass","category-gsarchive","tag-cassander","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2824,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions\/2824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}