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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3:32
Up on the roof, spotters with binoculars radio the big picture down to their drivers and crew chiefs. The sound is even louder up here, as if the stadium were a giant concrete speaker.
EEEEEEAAAAOOOOWWW!!!
I can see the tent city in the campgrounds to the east and northeast, the massive parking lots to the south and west, the haulers and buses in the infield, and fans everywhere, not as many as the TMS had hoped (181,500 was the final tally, a turnout diminished by the rain and, perhaps, the opening of deer hunting season), but a lot of people nonetheless. It’s always amazing to be part of a really big audience, but the crowds at the football games and rock concerts I’ve been to pale in comparison to this one, and not just in terms of size. Staring down at the gathered Nation, it’s clear to me that NASCAR fans—who show up so early, who care so deeply about their drivers—are more passionate about their sport than anybody else. It’s not just about driving fast. It’s about lifestyle. History. And not giving a damn what the rest of the world thinks.
3:40
Stewart leads now, followed by Junior, Johnson, Kahne, and Gordon. The top five NASCAR stars. How perfect is that?
4:01
After a while, things start to fade into each other, and I’m lulled by the repetition, the sameness. Some cars move up, some fall back. Indeed, the main strategy for most drivers is to wait in the pack, avoiding trouble, until the very end of the race, when they can make their move. Back in the grandstand, I watch Stewart go around and around the track. I watch the big screen. I long for some drama, maybe even a crash. The truth is, it’s okay to long for a crash. Thirty-one drivers died in NASCAR’s first 53 years, but none have since Earnhardt’s fatal crack-up in 2001, after which safety improvements were mandated. The drivers are now packed into their cars so tightly and safely—and the track has “soft” walls that give way slightly on impact—that it’s really hard to get badly hurt anymore, much less killed.
Another caution flag goes up. A woman three rows down throws her hands in the air, obviously upset. Many fans complain about ghost-debris caution flags, ordered, they believe, by the powers that be when things get a little samey down on the track. A restart can always be depended on to stir things up again.
4:17
Junior, who won his very first Cup race here at the TMS in 2000, has been in second for a while now, and two pretty women in red number 8 jerseys lean over their seats and wave at him twice a minute as he zips by. The one on the left is a dyed blonde, and the one on the right, who wears a set of headphones and holds a number 8 doll in her hands, is a redhead. They look to be in their late thirties. As the cars go by, the blonde flips the finger at Stewart. She waves at Junior, circles her hand to the right, and then points in that direction, toward turn one. Junior follows. A few laps later Johnson passes Junior on the inside and she flips him off too. But then Junior passes Johnson, and the women and the other fans cheer.
Ten laps later Bowyer comes in behind Junior so fast he causes him to get loose, lose control, and smash into the wall. Everyone stands as the caution flag comes out. The drivers pull into the pits, but while other cars are in and out in fifteen seconds, Junior’s crew keeps him there, trying to pull the fender out from his right rear tire. “Get out! Get out!” fans yell. The other drivers are already rolling behind the pace car. It takes a whole minute, an eternity, for Junior to get out, and then after just one caution lap, he returns to the pit. Fans stare intently through binoculars, trying to figure out what’s wrong. The blonde and the redhead just stare.
5:35
After another caution flag (the race would feature twelve, the most ever at the TMS) and another round of pit stops (at almost every one, Stewart’s crew is the fastest), the cars roar through another restart. Kahne has been in second behind Stewart for twenty minutes or so, and now he makes his move, trying to pass him on the inside of turn three and then turn four. Stewart blocks both attempts. The crowd begins cheering Kahne, who is two car lengths back. On turn one of the next lap he tries to go to the outside but can’t make it. He tries again on turn three—same result. On the straightaway Kahne is drafting behind Stewart at 190 mph. The fans are screaming. Kahne tries again to go wide on the next turn, but Stewart is too fast. Kahne drafts again on the straightaway but then falls back about twelve feet and then even farther. Stewart has won another battle.
Meanwhile, Junior—whose crew eventually got his car roadworthy again—has fought his way back from thirty-fourth place and is now in seventh.
5:55
We’re in the homestretch, only 27 laps to go, but everyone in the pits looks exhausted. Some crews have already begun tearing down and packing up, even though anything can still happen. The difference between Stewart and the guy in thirty-fifth place is maybe 25 seconds. A loose oil line could lead to “the big one,” a huge chain-reaction pileup that takes out dozens of cars. Stewart could blow a rod. Kahne could blow his engine.
6:02
He does, with eleven laps to go, and limps to the garage. His pit crew packs up.
6:19
With eight laps left, Kevin Harvick bumps Scott Riggs, who is in second, sending him into the wall. A bunch of trailing cars wind up in the grass as camera flashes go off all over the grandstand. Everyone heads to the pits and out again for the final restart. The only drama at this point is whether Johnson, in second and now the Chase points leader (he would win the Cup two weeks later), can catch Stewart. He drafts right behind him, but nobody is going to catch Stewart today.
Car or driver? Stewart seems to have an extra couple of horses under the hood, but he’s also clearly in some kind of a zone, the way Michael Jordan or Joe Montana or Bob Gibson used to get. He has the reflexes, the arrogance, the killer instinct, the guts, the smarts, the feel. It’s as if he can see the whole track and sense what’s about to happen at any moment.
6:31
Stewart crosses the finish line under two checkered flags. Johnson is 0.272 seconds back, and Junior finishes sixth. Stewart, who led for 278 laps (the most ever in a race at the TMS) pulls up at the finish line, climbs out his window, scales the twenty-foot fence to the flag stand, grabs a checkered flag and waves it, climbs down, gets back in his car, and commences the “burnout” victory dance—screeching, doing doughnuts, and smoking his tires. Then he heads for Victory Lane, just behind pit road. He waits until the signal from NBC that its commercials are over and, with confetti blowing and TV cameras rolling, climbs out and stands in his window, raises his fist, takes a big swig out of a giant bottle of Coke (one of his sponsors), cheers along with the crowd, and gives a TV interview, in which he says, “I think I’ve been inspired by my new sponsor in Hiram, Georgia, Ray Roquemore’s Taxidermy. He’s been telling me I need to win races so I can get in victory lane and promote his taxidermy company.”
6:40
In the pressroom, the drivers give good ad: “The Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet was good all day long,” begins Bowyer. “It was a really good day for our GM Goodwrench Chevrolet,” says Harvick.
6:50
After Stewart gets his Dickies 500 trophy (he won $521,361 for the race), he begins doing the “hat dance.” With his right hand on the trophy and his left holding his first finger up in a number one sign, he has his picture taken wearing a cap showing the logo of each one of his more than two dozen sponsors. Stewart’s 29 Cup victories have given him a lot of practice doing the hat dance, and he flashes the same big, slightly lopsided grin for each sponsor. He takes one cap off and tosses it to a man on his right, who then hands him the next one. Chevrolet. UGS. WIX. Bass Pro Shops. Timken. Sunoco. Goodyear. 3M. Mac Tools. I watch him do this for ten minutes, completely unself-consciously. NASCAR, which was for so long defined by rugged Southern individualists, has become completely beholden to corporations, but the drivers have long gotten over any qualms they may have had about this. So, of course, have the fans. We love our drivers, and if they must wear the logos and sing the praises of products we know they don’t really use, well, it’s one of the lesser sins an athlete can commit. Especially when it buys so much speed.
7:15
Stewart shakes hands all around and walks out of Victory Lane. It is dark and cold, and the confetti is now just litter blowing over the pavement. The pit crews have all packed up, and an impatient security guard shoos me out too. Mini-cars with high-pitched engines are buzzing around a quarter-mile version of the track—a Sunday night race of the Lone Star Legends—and handfuls of fans are scattered throughout the grandstand. Most, though, are long gone, drinking beer and parsing the day’s action back at the campsites or sitting in their cars in the long, slow lines of traffic leading away from the track, dreaming of the fearless drivers who will deliver them again next Sunday.
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