Game Over 
EEEEEEAAAAOOOOWWW!!!
Twelve hours, 500 miles, 2,000 tires, 7,000 gallons of gas, 20,000 Dale Earnhardt Jr. shirts, 16,000 hot dogs, and an inland sea of light beer: My fearless voyage into the 34,400- horsepower heart of Nascar, Texas.
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Stock car racing began in the Deep South, in the hills of North Carolina and Georgia, where federal revenue agents chased Prohibition-era moonshine runners driving souped-up cars disguised to look as ordinary as possible. The drivers—hotheaded young men like Junior Johnson, immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s 1965 Esquire story, “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!”—found themselves racing one another in their off time, especially after Prohibition ended. NASCAR was founded in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1948, and the new organization built tracks and established rules and standards. The idea was to race stock cars, the ones everyday people drove. Detroit got in the game, building supercharged versions of those cars with V8 engines, wide tires, and massive suspension systems. In the sixties television brought the sport out of the boonies with help from personalities such as Richard Petty, a.k.a. the King, who wore sunglasses and a cowboy hat, autographed everything put in front of him, and won seven championships.
The modern age began in 1971, after Congress banned cigarette advertising on TV. Looking for a new venue, cigarette giant R.J. Reynolds gave NASCAR $100,000 a year in exchange for its brands’—especially Winston—being displayed everywhere. The Winston Cup Series was born. In the seventies and eighties NASCAR modified its rules and regulations until all cars were basically the same, though crews kept finding ways to squeeze an extra horse or two out of an engine. The eighties saw the emergence of Earnhardt, who played the bad guy to Petty’s good guy and was known as the Intimidator.
The supermodern age began in 2001, when, on the last turn of the last lap of the most legendary NASCAR track, the Daytona International Speedway, the Intimidator smashed into the wall and died. Even non-fans took notice of his shocking death and the deep mourning it triggered throughout NASCAR Nation; almost immediately, the sport’s popularity rose in the mainstream. Two years later Reynolds withdrew as the major sponsor and Nextel signed on. Cigarettes out, cell phones in. In 2004 NASCAR made an overt effort to bring in more-casual fans when it replaced the points system it formerly used to crown its champion with the new Chase for the Cup.
Not everyone is happy with the changes, even if they have helped make NASCAR one of the great success stories in American sports history. Old-time fans complain about the modern, corporate NASCAR, how it altered the points system, changed its lead sponsor from the ultimate Southern crop to the ultimate universal consumer item, and reached out to the rest of the country by adding races in places like Kansas City and Chicago while at the same time cutting them at venerable Southern tracks. How far will NASCAR go? Well, this year, for the first time, it’s allowing a foreign car company into the Cup. After almost sixty years of having the track to themselves, Ford, Dodge, and Chevy will have to make room for—gasp—Toyota.
12:55
NASCAR may be turning Japanese, but it still relentlessly honors its American heroes—this morning by making a long presentation to Terry Labonte, a veteran driver from Corpus Christi who is retiring after this race. Then today’s drivers are introduced, in reverse order of starting position. As their names are called they appear at the top of the Nextel castle, wave regally, descend the stairs, and high-five Sparky, the TMS’s spark plug mascot. Many drivers get no response, as if the fans have never heard of them, but the marquee stars are loudly applauded: Stewart, the bad boy; Hamlin, the rookie phenom; Matt Kenseth, the consistent but boring Wisconsinite, who is leading the Chase; Johnson, the rising star who is primed to take over that lead today. Half the crowd boos Gordon, the nice-looking corporate guy. Kahne, the young hottie, is wildly cheered. And when Junior’s name is called, the stadium goes messianic, roaring for the son of the South, the son of the Intimidator.
After the intros, the drivers walk to Chevy pickups, climb in back, ride around the track, waving and smiling at the crowd until they reach pit road, where the cars are waiting.
All right, let’s roll.
1:55
Not so fast. The official starting time comes and goes. Drivers sit in their cars, get out and stand around with their pretty wives and girlfriends, do interviews with the Speed Channel, watch two blinged-out blond “pit lizards” in tight jeans slink hand in hand up and down the line, and wait for the trucks drying the track to drive slowly around and the pit crews to blowtorch the pavement, though by this time, it looks pretty damn dry.
2:20
I hike over to the crowded grandstand and find a seat high above the start/finish line. For a time, at least, I’m a member of NASCAR Nation. We stare. We eat. We stand. We sit. We finally hear the words we’ve been waiting for.
“Gentlemen, start your engines!”
They do, each car coming loudly to life. The pace car, with flashing lights on its roof, leads the cars in single file, and they roll around the track as the crowd stands and cheers.
2:44
The cars are moving at maybe 50 mph now, and a man in the flag stand above the start/finish line waves a yellow caution flag. One lap later, he waves a yellow flag and a green flag, which means the race is officially beginning, though it’s beginning rather cautiously because of the conditions. On the next lap he flashes two fingers at the cars, which split into two precise columns, a parade going grandly around the track. There is one lap to go until the green flag, and the cars weave back and forth, warming up their tires and knocking off bits of loose rubber, speeding up and braking, growling like dogs. We’re on our feet now, waving caps in the air, whooping and taking pictures.
2:45
The pace car veers off onto pit road, and the two lines slowly accelerate as they head down the last two hundred yards to the start/finish line. Everyone is screaming and the cars are getting louder and faster and the flagman waves two green flags and the bright numbers and logos blur past as 43 eight-hundred-horsepower engines open up as far as they can go and the sound shakes the earth and all of us standing there.
EEEAAAOOOWWW!!!
It is obnoxious, violent, and arrogant, the loudest thing I’ve ever heard, and I feel it deep down in my football-loving soul. It feels good.
And then they are off, around the first and second turns, like geese on the wing, jocke-ying for position. Thirty-two seconds later they’re back, even faster, but not as loud, because the line has already started to thin out. Kurt Busch has taken the lead, and fans tip their hats at their drivers and wave their hands.
EEEAAAOOWW!!!
2:50
Twelve laps in, the fans sit down. There are another 322 to go. Cameras inside twelve of the cars feed video of what’s happening around them to the Nextel screen. Maybe a quarter of the fans have on headphones to listen on radio scanners to the drivers talk to their crews. The sound of the individual cars as they pass is sharp and quick—VEEEOW! VEEEOW!
3:03
A yellow caution flag comes out, and the cars all slow down and stay in position behind the pace car, which has zipped out onto the course. Yellow flags usually mean something dangerous has fallen on the track, like oil or debris, though I can’t see anything. The cars head slowly to the pits for four new tires, a tank of gas, and any adjustments the driver or crew chief thinks are needed, usually to help the steering and handling. At Clint Bowyer’s station, the men, all in black Jack Daniel’s uniforms like their driver, put on their helmets and gloves, pick up their tires and gas cans, go to the wall, and wait intently: the jack man, the gas man, the catch can man, the two tire changers, and the two tire carriers. A fast pit stop can vault a rider into first and even victory lane, while a slow one can send him to the back of the pack. As Bowyer’s car screeches in, the jack man slides the jack under the right side before it’s even stopped. The tire changer fires a pneumatic gun at the lug nuts on the front tire—1-2-3-4-5!—and yanks it off; the carrier jams the new tire on, and the changer fires the gun five more times (the nuts are glued onto the wheel). Another pair works the rear tire. The jack man lowers the car, and they hustle to the other side to do it all again. Meanwhile, the gas man slams one 11-gallon can into the fuel cell, and the catch can man jerks it out. They repeat with a second can. The last to touch the car is the jack man, who drops it even as it is already burning new rubber and spinning out. The whole thing takes fourteen or fifteen seconds. Two crew members low-five each other and turn around to watch on the big screen as Bowyer gets in line behind the pace car with everyone else, all doing the fishtail wiggle. Then, as almost a fifth of a million people stand up, the pace car veers off, the drivers slowly accelerate toward the starting line, and 43 fine-tuned, supercharged machines take off again with a snot-loosening roar that you just don’t get on TV.
EEEAAAOOOWWW!!!
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