Nice report here Bricker. Hopefully we can all look forward eventually to the days of speedboat races between former cocaine smugglers, or pilot races where they have to skim over the top of ocean waves and stay off Coast Guard radar. 
I know that shine is still being made in the hill country, but nobody still has secret speed machines waiting to take this stuff anywhere right?
A truly outstanding report, Bricker. One additional tie in between NASCAR and moonshiners is that some of the early stars of NASCAR were former moonshiners. The most famous was Junior Johnson who was a legendary moonshiner and probably the first superstar of NASCAR. He eventually was arrested for moonshining, but not for running the liquor (driving). I believe he was arrested at the still site.
What gets me is the claim by NASCAR, and by a good many of their fans (my wife’s side of the family included), that what they’re racing is stock cars. They’re not. Dale Jarrett’s Chevy Malibu (or whatever he drives) has no more in common with a stock Chevy Malibu than a F-16 does with a Cessna. AFAIAC, the claim that NASCAR races stock cars is as big a lie (if not bigger) as the once bandied-about claim that professional wrestling is real.
Bill France’s original vision was for three divisions: roadster, modified stock, and straight stock. The roadster fell flat, but the straight stock enjoyed some early success. Interestingly enough, one of the problems that plagued the straight stock competition was unauthorized modifications; the organization had to defend itself against a lawsuit by a disqualified driver who had been booted for replacing his car’s springs.
So even in the “straight stock” attempt, modified stock was seen as the way to go. 
Jarret’s last Daytona win was in a Ford, by the way.
(Underlining mine.)
Close to the water air-speed races: http://www.redbullairrace.com/ heh.
Air racing has been around since the earliest of days. Air racing - Wikipedia (since 1909) Dunno when cocaine smuggling got big.
So… moonshiners outran the law… by constantly turning left…
You’d figure one smart fbi agent (an elite northener, of course) would do a u-turn and block the road easily enough, but I guess the Yankees had better things to do. 
(Loved the report! Still don’t understand why the racetracks are so damn boring.)
Hot Wheels has good ideas along those lines…
It was nearly 50 years ago that the late, great Tom McCahill described “stock cars” as “about as ‘stock’ as the Statue of Liberty in a bikini.”
I was going to pipe in with how my grandfather ran The Good Stuff down from Canada, how much I miss drivers like Curtis Turner, and how annoyed I am that he and Smokey Yunick got in trouble for their 7/8ths-scale Chevelle when the whippersnappers today call their funnycars “stock”, even though there’s no such thing as a two-door Taurus or Malibu, and Toyota-effing-Camrys are allowed to compete (spitting on the ground to ward off the evil eye), but JWK reminded us of a certain age how much fun Tom McCahill’s old road tests were to read, even if by reading R&T we found his Ramblers and Triumph Heralds ("a geranium pot ") less than inspiring. And THAT got me thinking about how much I loved “Mechanix Illustrated,” though my attention span was far too short to actually MAKE any of the projects.
McCahill was a Marmon salesman so don’t get me started thinking about how I used to work in a former Marmon dealership across the street from Al Capone’s Vaults or I’ll NEVER hit the “Post Reply” button.
Bricker, I thought for sure you messed up Campbell’s record at Daytona. I would have bet quite a bit against someone having hit 275+ in 1935… on a beach.
You were right of course, but wow, that’s still hard to believe.
