Me neither, but then that doesn’t really characterize what they do anymore than saying that people watch TV just to see pixels of light changing colors and intensity. I’m not a big NASCAR fan, but I do have friends and family who are. It took me a pretty long time to “get it”, but I think that it’s all about loyalty and vicarious thrill, just as with any sport. There are more nuances than you think with respect to racing — from the mechanical engineering aspects of trying to draw more power and responsiveness to the social aspects of clashing personalities and styles. It’s true that you have to have a sponsor to have any chance at consistently winning in NASCAR because the costs are so high. But getting a sponsor is as simple as being a winner, and paying your dues with a track record (pun!) of successes at smaller venues. Those who put in the time and sweat and have the ability will get the sponsorships. After all, that’s what sponsors are looking for.
It’s not that bad. There are about 40 “name” drivers. This year, 15 won a race. And it’s not like finishing 2nd (or anywhere in the top 5) isn’t fun to watch either.
My brother said to me once that “Gentlemen, start your engines” at the beginning of the race brings him to tears in a way that not even the birth of his children did.
All I can say to that is: WTF???
I use to be a huge fan on Indy car racing and still watch the Indy 500 every year. What has turned me off is the influx of foreign drivers. It started with Emerson Fittipaldi and I have been losing interest since. The IRL was suppose to correct that situation, American cars and drivers on oval tracks. In 2006 the only US made chassis is gone, Honda will be the only engine, 75% of the drivers are foreign and they are racing on road courses. Phhhhtt.
I like your brother. He has his priorities straight. 
If you don’t like NASCAR racing, fine; go watch something that excites you…old reruns of Bowling for Dollars, maybe.
But don’t make such an ass of yourself as to say drivers are not athletes. To drive a stock car at a competitive speed for three or four hours is gruelling. There are no time outs (a pit stop is now accomplished in less the 14 seconds, giving the driver a chance for a gulp of water before he has to roar back into battle.
Heat? On a hot summer day, temperatures in the driver’s seat can reach 120 degrees for the duration of the race. In order to make the cars aerodynamic, little air is allowed into the car for cooling the driver. Plus he is wearing fireproof underwear and a heavy all-covering racing suit, gloves and helmet. Drivers routinely lose ten to fifteen pounds during a race.
Danger? Any driver who competes regularily is going to be kicked around by the law of averages. Most suffer bruising, heat exhaustion and minor burns even without crashing. As for the latter, cars are much safer than they used to be, but make no mistake: it is a dangerous sport, and drivers do get killed out there. In the fifteen or so years I have watched the sport I have seen several drivers killed and many injured. They put their lives on the line in each race, and the season is more than 40 races.
Skill? Do you really think you could drive literally inches behind another car at over 200 miles per hour, lap after lap, planning that one moment when you will be able to slowly slip past him? Feeling the slipping of your tires as you move into a turn, feeling your car buffetted by the wind and the aerodynamic effects of racing cheek-by-jowl with other cars? Knowing some other driver is trying to do the same to you? Wondering why your engine temperature is climbing, and how long your engine will last?
Strategy? Air pressure of less than a pound can seriously affect your car’s handling. As the track temperature increases your car’s handling changes. What worked a few laps ago is not working now. Do you stop to have the handling adjusted, or tough it out, hoping you can make it to the next scheduled pit stop, knowing that your car is becoming more and more likely to go out of control and stuff you into an unforgiving concrete wall.
Soo-o…you think you could race a stock car just because you know how to drive a car? This is maybe the most pernicious slur about NASCAR racing. I can throw a basketball through a hoop (occasionally) but I don’t think I am NBA material. I can run (sort of, and throw a baseball or football, but—well, you get the idea. Your ability to drive a car puts you in the same position vis-a-vis NASCAR as my meager athletic skills do me in the stick-and-ball sports.
I’ve been a fan since the late '70’s, and used to go to Talladega, Bristol, Atlanta, and Daytona.
That said, I regard the current state of NA$CAR as so boring I don’t even watch the races any more. Brian France has managed to wreck in a few years what Big Bill took decades to build. Leave it to a marketing person to suck the soul out of something as exciting as racing.
You need to go to a race in person to see if you really like it–I recommend a Busch or ARCA or Truck companion race at a Cup event, or a Hooters Cup race at a local track, or the IRL, actually.
As for TV? Try to catch replays of races from the 80’s to the early 90’s on ESPN Classic or SPEED–back when the cars actually resembled something you could buy, cars could lean on each other and bump without destroying their aero package, cars in clean air didn’t gain a huge advantage, and before extra-sticky tires and rev-limiters and bulletproof brakes and other technology made the driver just one part of the winning equation instead of the most important part.
And let’s not even start in on the modern tv coverage, where cars are given air time proportional to how much $$$ their sponsors have coughed up instead of it being based on the actual race being run.
Sigh.
I guess it’s time for me to go yell at the kids to get off my lawn.
I don’t think anyone said that.
Regardless, as a racing fan, I still don’t necessarily buy it.
They have highly tuned physical skills, but so do surgeons, and I don’t call them athletes.
Nor do I call NASCAR a sport.
But, that’s completely beside the point. It’s still a competition. It’s a competition between engineers, pit crews, crew chiefs, drivers, and spotters and whether it’s a sport or whether a driver should be classified as an athlete is completely immaterial to my enjoyment of it.
I am a racing fan. Third generation. My parents met doing autocross, and I plan on getting into it a bit myself with my car, once I get better shocks on the old wagon.
I know racing. My father did the market research for IRL, I used to be in the paddock, just hanging. I know what to look for.
That said, I no longer understand the appeal of NASCAR. The cars are too similar, the tracks are too simple. I loved it in the 70s and 80s. Then, the car wasn’t a known quality, the car was at least partly stock. Now? It’s too close to F1, but simplified.
I want WRC to challenge it. Show these folks what real driving looks like again.
I was never a NASCAR “fan”. Still aren’t particularly for that matter, but I can respect the skill and teamwork it takes to win there. There are a lot of mainstream sports I’m not a big fan of: NBA basketball for one. Give me a good high school or college game instead. Anyway, to get back on track…
This summer, a friend invited me to the NASCAR race at the Joliet Speedway. I came away with a whole new appreciation for that experience. There’s the tailgate before, and the huge fairground/spectacle around the track. And the massive row of team semi-trailers hawking team gear.
It was about 95 in the shade the day we went, and that of course led to loads of scantily clad wimmen folk. Ignore what you may have heard about NASCAR women fans being sterotyped.
Now to the race. We had seats between the pit entrance and Start/Finish line, about 2 rows from the track. Anything happening on the outside portion of the track we missed, but we could see most of the way around the track. Which is so totally not the point anyway. There is nothing so visceral as being 70 feet (or so) from a screaming line of cars racing by at, I think somewhere in the vicinity of 180-185 MPH.
As cars come toward you out of the nearest turn at that speed, you have a window of about 1 second in which to ID who it is before it turns to a blur.
The drama NASCAR builds into races is that yellow flag. it comes out, and it’s bathroom/beer break time, because it’s going to be out for a few fast minutes during which cars race into the pits, get fuel/tires and go back into the slow line-up.
When the green is going to come out, and you’re on the front straight, you feel more than hear the engines racing to get to full throttle and the rush for position is a combination of kickoff/inside-the-park home run/penatly shot/fast break all at once. Except at 180 MPH.
After I had been to a race, I tried watching it on TV once. Bah. But if JD ever offers me another ticket, I’m going. it was a blast.
This was the post that implied that NASCAR drivers are not athletes. IANA NASCAR fan at all, and could even care less about the crashes, but these guys are finely tuned athletes. Try driving one of those little “Monaco Grand Prix” cars around a mini track for an hour and you will be whooped. It takes every muscle in one’s body to operate a car with complete control at those speeds.
I still find the whole sport boring to watch, but I do like to watch poker and an occassional gold tourney…
NASCAR may not be the best sport out there today, but it is a lot of fun to watch. It is more than “drive fast, turn left” that many non-fans make it out to be. Imagine driving on an icy road in rush hour traffic, bumper to bumper, at speeds approaching 200 mph.
It isn’t easy finding what makes NASCAR popular, however, because there are almost as many reasons to watch a race as there are fans to watch it. I like to see the “greybeards” on superspeedways. Some fans may like to see the “young guns” on short tracks, or road races. There are not only driver to follow, but teams to support, and even the manufacturers draw some fans.
But in no sport will you ever find anything more exciting than the rush you feel when the green flag is waved.
NASCAR drivers are finely tuned athletes?
Then why was Robbie Gordon lambasted as a fat slob when his ongoing complaints about NASCAR not regulating weight finally had a lightning rod in the form of Danica Patrick to focus on?
About race car drivers and if they are athletes. Go back and rad post #25 by moving fingers If anything they underestimated what drivers go through.
I have participated in auto racing. Try sitting in a cockpit that is between 130-140 F on a hot summer day. You are wearing between 3-5 layers of what can best be described as blankets. You are subjected to way over 1G of sideways acceleration in the corners. You have to hit the apex on a corner exactaly right evey time on every lap. If you miss the apex people pass you.
In NASCAR the race is several hours long. I have seen (more than once) that after a 20 minute sprint race in SCCA drivers being lifted from their cars. They were that done in that they did not have the engery to climb out of the car. That was a 20 minute sprint race. How about a 500 miler. :eek: Physical? Hell yes it’s physical. To say different is just wrong. Those guys are studs.
I had someone ask me about this once. The best comparision I could come up with was iminage a summer day. It is hot. The sun in shining. You are dressed in winter clothers, t-shirt, shirt, sweater, and a jacket. You have to chop wood. If you miss with the axe you lose. Do you really think you could keep that up for 3 hours? I got $5 on no.
NASCAR is not my favorite racing. My wife loves it. We had a friend come over for dinner on a Sunday a while back. She was of the opinion that NASCAR was like driving up the 405 during rush hour, and that drivers were not athletes. We talked about it while the race was running, and I pointed out what was happening. In about 30 minutes she went from nothing to a rabid fan. Her comment at the end of the race was “I had no idea”
I kmow a lot of people who didn’t “get” hockey until they went to a game. I know people who were forced into attending a real-life baseball game and finally understood the appeal.
It’s the venue, you see.
Watching a baseball game on TV or listening on the radio because you are expected to is one thing. Spending a day under the sun in the bleachers drinking beer and eating salted-in-the-shell peanuts while being tutored in the intracasies of a score sheet are another. Some people get it; some don’t. I don’t condemn or praise either side; it’s a taste thing. Might as well debate the merits of red versus white wines.
I don’t see anything good about watching a bunch of TV edits of cars going around in circles. Still don’t. But, once upon a time, I lived in Nascar country and went to a couple of races and got to sit in the stands with a bunch of people who cared about the sport, and listened and learned, and heard the engines race, and got to wipe the bits of burned rubber, tossed up by tires 300 feet away, off of my nose after the race was done. I followed the circuit for a time, just based on my knowledge from that one race, but don’t any more because I’m away from the culture.
I’ve never been to Pamplona to seen the running of the bulls. I find the whole process silly and, in a detached sense, somewhat cruel. But I’m sure that if I got to know someone who lived on Pamplona’s bull route, I’d be up there in the balcony waving my handkerchief and cheering on those nutjob on the street.
I think that to enter fandom, of any sort, one must temporarily tuck rationality into a hidden corner of the mind and just go with the flow of the moment. Go to a race with that in mind and just enjoy the moment. Maybe it’ll suck, but you won’t know until you try.
Calm down, please, movingfinger. The OP just expressed his/her lack of knowledge as to why folks like NASCAR; no one was trying to be rude. This thread has been very civil, so let’s keep it that way.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the drivers are in very good conditioning to do what they do. They are also highly skilled.
But a baseball player can borrow my gloves, cleats, and bat and still be able to hit, run, and catch at a Major League level. If I swap cars with a NASCAR driver, he couldn’t possibly win a race with my stock '86 Toyota Tercel (against other NASCAR drivers — I’d probably still lose the auto race). Athletics are needed to complete the event; quality of equipment largely determines who competes in the event.
If I were to compare race car driving to any other kind of known athletic competition, it’d be something like that skeet-skiing event they used to have in the Winter Olympics. You must have the athleticism and conditioning to complete the event, but you might as well not show up if you don’t have a gun that shoots worth a damn.
Race car drivers are athletes, if you want to call them that — but I wouldn’t call the sport an athletic competition.
Or, of course, playing hockey without pads and a helmet. Sure, you can do it. I dare you to do it on a professional rink.
You can race with your stock Tercel. Against other stock cars of the same class, the NASCAR driver will win. Almost assuredly.
<bolding mine>
Welcome to the SDMB. I’m afraid we are going to need some proof for that statement. Again, WELCOME!
You could at least pretend to read what I wrote.
From the earnest descriptions of how athletic NASCAR drivers need to be in this thread, I would surmise that there are no fat slobs driving in NASCAR.
But yet there are. Unless you guys are asserting that Robbie Gordon is a “finely tuned athlete” and not the “fat slob” he was characterized as being during the IRL thread about Danica Patrick?