That’s always been the problem, Casey. The stretches are great, the turns (from most seats) are horrible. And, there’s where a lot of the good action happens.
Still, I’ve never been there myself so I may have to try to get tickets to one of the races and take you up on your hospitality. 
My wife got me ride around tickets for my birthday one year. When I arranged to get up there and finally participate, it was the during the week after the June race. Ricky Rudd’s steering went during that race, and he hit the wall in turn one pretty hard, with skid marks coming from the beginning of the turn into the wall, and a huge black stripe on the wall. It was pretty intimidating seeing that just outside my window at 175+ MPH.
As far as I know there was never an R in motocross. The moto doesn’t stand for motor it stands for moto.
The concept of motocross in America consists of one race consisting of two motos.
In the pros the motos are 30 minutes plus two laps. How you finished in these two motos are combined for the cumalative place for the race.
As a side note if you have friends that ride, refer to it as motorcross. It drives them nuts:D
Another notable NASCAR characteristic is the scene on the winner’s podium after the race. The winning driver holds up the race trophy (or the race’s beauty pageant winner) while the driver’s crew a number of baseball caps on the driver’s head. Each cap bears a different sponsor’s logo, and each cap rests on the champion’s head for only as long as it takes to take a photo for the sponsor’s benefit, then its on to the next cap. The whole procedure looks really funny but it means big bucks.
That happens during on camera interviews, too. In fact, last year Ricky Rudd had a commercial spoofing the practice. The premise was that he had just won a race, and was thanking his team and crew, as a handler would put caps with progressively larger logos for his sponsor at the time. In the final clip, he’s wearing a cap with a huge lighted sponsor sign.
I’ve been a Nascar fan for ages. Never been to a race. I tape the race every Sunday (when I’m at Church) so I can watch it later.
I got my family hooked the season before Dale Earnhardt died. It was pretty easy to do really. Like any competition, the more you know about the competitors the more interesting it is to watch or follow the sport. Over the course of a few months, while I was having problems with my VCR, I would have my mom tape the races for me and I’d go over there for a nice Sunday dinner then watch the race. They were full of questions, so I explained what was happening and why I liked or disliked a driver or decision…
it was too easy. My dad and my sister still watch the races every week and mom at least understands why.
For me, it has nothing to do with driving fast, the smell of gasoline, I don’t drink beer, I’m a geek not a redneck… I just love watching the strategies unfold throughout the race. Go fast and turn left is so remarkably oversimplified. Depending on the track and circumstances the drive may need to save his tires, save his brakes, conserve fuel (and not just flip a switch and run leaner for a few laps like they do with those pointy cars, but actually drive the car differently to conserve fuel).
It’s always funny that CART fans dis oval racing, but the best races of the CART season are the ones on ovals and the Indy 500 is still the Holy Grail of Indy cars even if CART isn’t playing on that track anymore. Road Courses are fun, and a nice change, but IMO they just don’t compare.
Another long time NASCAR fan adding my 2 cents. I grew up watching NASCAR, F1 and CART before the IRL split. The big difference to me was that in NASCAR, you can almost always count on at least half the field finishing on the lead lap, whereas with F1, CART and (now) IRL, it’s not unusual to have less than half the field finish.
Yes, the crashes in NASCAR get a lot of play, but the cars aren’t designed to disintigrate on impact like F1, IRL or CART. Take last weeks accident with Mario Andretti. He’s arguably the best driver of all time (cross league). His spectacular crash was a direct result of the pieces flying off the car in front of him. In NASCAR, he probably would have spun out, but not flipped three times. A minor NASCAR accident means “put some 100 mph tape on it and get back out there”, whereas in CART or IRL, it’s the end of the race. (If you want to talk about compartive safety, well, that’s another thread in another forum).
My short list of favorite things about NASCAR:
I’m also a fan of sprint track racing, and I’m a computer engineer with a college degree and I don’t drink bad beer or have buck teeth. The last time I went to a sprint track, the crowd was completely cross-spectrum. Lumping all (or even most) of the fans into the “beer swilling red neck” stereotype would have been a complete injustice.
I have to say this. Treat yourself and go see at least one race live. I get out to bike races whenever I can, which is rarely, but the appreciation of speed when present at the track is for me astonishing. Those people are flying!
TruePisces alluded to this in an earlier post and I thought I’d add a couple of cent’s worth.
One of the Onion’s high points was an Infographic called Nuts for NASCAR. I’m paraphrasing (the original’s long gone from the Onion archives), but my favorites of their Reasons Why NASCAR’s So Popular:
Much easier to understand than them other sports with all them people moving in different directions and all.
At other type races and the cars keep going and going and then you can’t see them no more.
But the best:
Combines southerners’ two favorite races: auto and white.
(A gentler version of that last comment appears in a Mike Luckovich cartoon about the Georgia flag controversy. A white man and a black man are talking, agreeing that they needed to find a symbol of Southern white heritage that didn’t carry racist overtones. Solution? Above the state capitol, a NASCAR flag waves…)
That comment is fine as long as you realize it’s a stereotype and doesn’t really reflect the average NASCAR car fan any better than it does the average Georgia citizen. NASCAR has races all over the US including California (Sears Point), Pennsylvania (Pocono), New Hampshire (Louden), New York (Watkin’s Glen), Michigan (Michigan International), and Kansas (Kansas Speedway), none of which are usually considered as Southern states. The races in PA and NH are two of the oldest in NASCAR.
Yes, NASCAR has it’s roots in places like Virginia, North & South Carolina and Kentucky, but it also comes from Florida, Texas, Kansas, California, the Midwest and New England. Some of the best modified races I’ve seen in recent years were in Seekonk Speedway in south eastern Massachusetts (a NASCAR sanctioned track).
Don’t forget Chicago, where Cecil may take the Straight Dope Monte Carlo into victory lane later this year, if we’re lucky!
Sorry, I didn’t mean to forget Chicago, or Las Vegas or Nazareth or Indianapolis or Phoenix or Pikes Peak or Milwaukee or Memphis or any of the other two dozen or so cities that host NASCAR races (and aren’t in the South).
Casey1505, I’m going to be at First Pocono, but I think only that Sunday. (My dad’s taking me.) I forget which section our seats are in - Terrace level, a little to the turn one side of the white line. If anybody wants to meet up and say “howdy” at the race itself I’m amenable, but pre-race stuff will be out of the question for me 'cause my dad’s an internetophobe. (I might’ve met my boyfriend here, but that doesn’t mean the rest of y’all aren’t psycho killers who will murder me, then eat my bloody corpse in the middle of the grandstands. :rolleyes: )
My 88-y/o Mother in Law watches NASCAR on TV. Don’t know why, or what she likes about it, but she does. She knows the names of all the drivers. She lives in a nice tidy little suburban home, didn’t get her own driver’s license until she was about 50 and now drives at a steady 35 mph to the K-Mart or to church. Go figure.
Eating your bloody corpse in the middle of the grandstand would require me to bring moist towlettes and seasoning of some kind, taking up valuable beer-space in the cooler, which is out of the question. Besides, with the races being a communal event, I would also be required to share your carcass, which means more wet naps and more seasonings, and even more valuable beer-space being sacrificed. So rest assured, you will not be devoured mid-race. (Unless you’re wearing Greg Biffle gear, then all bets are off…)
I must confess I don’t share an interest in car racing other than waiting for the crashes, if no one gets hurt. It’s fascinating to watch a car flip over multiple times while other cars are (mostly) able to avoid the unfortunated car while travelling at high speeds. But I turn the channel quickly if the crashed car bursts into flame and the driver can’t get out quickly. I’m not that much of a vulture.
The sad thing is that the crashes that look the “safest” (i.e. not flipping, no parts flying anywhere, those kind of things.) In my years in watching races, there are three accidents that stick out with me most.
Earnhardt’s crash on the final lap of the Daytona 500 2 years ago. No parts flying around, not a spectacular crash. But a deadly one.
The crash involving Jimmy Means and JD McDuffie at Watkins Glen in 1991. (The link is from the Memorial Site my father set up for him a couple years ago.) They got together, slid off the track into the tire barrier they had set up, Means’ car flipping on top of McDuffie’s. Looked like it shouldn’t have been as bad as it was. I’d seen worse. Yet, JD didn’t make it out of his car alive. And Jimmy Means hasn’t been in Winston Cup since (if I’m remembering correctly.)
Michael Waltrip’s crash at Bristol in 1991. (The links to the pictures are near the bottom, under “Michael Waltrip”). After the wreck, you could barely recognize the fact that this was a car. And Michael walked away.
Crap. Knew I should have checked that coding. sigh Long day, I guess, followed by it not being a happy subject.
Yeah, TruePisces is right. The spectacular crashes where the cars flip through the air, skid down the track, spin around a few times and rip all their sheet metal off - they’re usually the safest, because the car’s body takes all the force of the crash. The mild-looking ones where the car goes straight into the wall with no fooling around and it still looks drivable from the driver’s door back - they’re usually the dangerous, even deadly ones, because the force of the crash doesn’t get scrubbed off, and the driver ends up with a pretty good share of it. *
Casey1505, who in their right mind would wear Greg Biffle gear? You’ll be able to pick me out in the crowd, though, because I’ll be the one cheering for Elliott Sadler.