NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) is still thought of as perhaps the greatest motor sport on Earth and it shows in the fact that it boasts many of the highest attendance records of any worldwide sport and gets broadcast to over 160 countries coming in second to football when it comes to viewers; not too shabby for the sport that actually spawned from those illegal late night moonshine runs.
The first sanctioned race was in Daytona Beach on February 15, 1948 after NASCAR’s founder, Bill France, Sr. decided to standardize and organize the stock car racing that sprang up after World War II. NASCAR was incorporated formally just a few months later. The original races were run on beach or dirt courses with the transition to a paved speedway in 1950 with the opening of the first Superspeedway in South Carolina.
Although still called stock cars you would find it difficult to find anything stock as far as components on these modern competition vehicles. If you squint really hard you can almost see the shape of a sedan in the car that is built on tope of a custom frame chassis that has been wrapped in a very thin skin of sheet metal. As for what powers these machines there are high revving, hand built pushrod V-8’s under the hood that can produce over 850 horsepower.
While it may be easy for us to make those “left turn only” comments and jokes think about the type of control that you need to navigate in a 200 mile per hour traffic jam completely surrounded by other blood-thirsty drivers mere inches from all parts of your car. Then think about the sheer talent that is needed to be able to exploit the tiniest hole in that traffic jam in order to gain any position. Really makes you think, huh?
