DURING one of the warm-up races that constitute the extended build-up to today's Daytona 500, Tony Stewart nudged the back of Kurt Busch's Dodge and pushed it into the wall. Once Busch recovered momentum, he caught up with his opponent on the way to the pits and started repeatedly slamming his car from the side.
Both men were then summoned to appear before the NASCAR authorities where the argument culminated in Stewart throwing a punch at his rival. Race officials responded by warning them to, ahem, try to avoid each other and most pundits concluded the inci
dent had actually been very good for the sport. It got the season off on just the right note.
What else would they say? This is a form of racing where two years back a clash between Busch and Greg Biffle at the Texas Motor Speedway led to a trackside confrontation between their respective partners. Having seen Busch bump her boyfriend out of a race in which he was contending, an irate Nicole Lunders took the matter further with Busch's fiancée Eva Bryan. She climbed into the Busch pit and launched a tirade at the other woman. Entertaining stuff but no big deal really. After all, back when brawls between drivers' families were commonplace, more than one wife used to pack a pistol in her purse.
This then is the bizarre demi-monde Dario Franchitti and his hopefully well-prepared wife Ashley Judd enter for the first time at Florida's most storied track this afternoon. In the event known as The Great American Race, his No.40 Dodge will start a lowly 39th on the grid and begin what should be a long learning process for the Scot.
Following his switch from the IndyCar scene he bestrode last season, he's completed the American motor racing equivalent of moving from the UEFA Cup to the Champions' League. From competing in events many of which barely register beyond a small coterie of die-hards, he's now participating in something more akin to a socio-cultural phenomenon.
An estimated 75 million Americans are National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) fans. Over the course of a ten-month, 36-race season, they spend roughly $2bn on merchandise and turn out in such huge numbers – average attendance at each contest is over 100,000 – that 15 of the top 20 most attended sports events each year belong to NASCAR. Every second car on any American road boasts a bumper sticker of a favourite driver's number and supporters are so devout that rain delays of races often garner superior television ratings to the NBA and NHL play-offs. Little wonder Hollywood has made three NASCAR-themed movies in recent years in an attempt to tap into the mania.
As you might expect from a sport that traces its colourful genesis back to moonshine couriers (the greatest of them, Junior Johnson, is today's honorary starter) outrunning government liquor agents on the dirt roads and mountain tracks of North Carolina, it's a little less refined and a lot more uncouth than Formula One, IndyCar or ChampCar. All of those are dismissed as merely open-wheel racing by NASCAR enthusiasts who, depending on the media outlet, can be described as good old boys or dismissed as white trash. They are such a unique demographic that election pollsters created a new classification called NASCAR dads to describe the type of white, working-class males candidates needed to attract.
In a sports universe where the chasm between the elite athletes and the ordinary people in the stands grows ever wider, NASCAR is a homely planet where the participants remain uniquely accessible to and conscious of the importance of fans. Many may fly to and from events on private jets but they also spend hours meeting and greeting supporters, famously never forget their roots, and consequently inspire rabid personal devotion among the faithful.
When Jeff Gordon won his 77th Sprint Cup race last April, his car was pelted with beer cans by large sections of the crowd at Talladega. They were angry at Gordon moving past the deceased icon Dale Earnhardt in the all-time wins table. In anticipation of just such a display, Earnhardt's son Dale Junior had requested before the race if they needed to vent, fans should throw toilet rolls instead of beer cans. That ludicrous request went unheard.
With each race coming at the end of a three-day event that combines motorsports with bacchanalian parties, the fans do tend to become a bit messy. The in-field at most tracks is usually the scene of legendary excess, the drinking punctuated by inebriated men offering women bead necklaces as a reward for taking off their tops in the Mardi Gras tradition. Bizarrely, these are the same people who then maintain perfect silence when the course chaplain leads the entire stadium in a pre-race public prayer. NASCAR invokes the Almighty just before its drivers are told to start their engines.
They are an obsessively patriotic bunch too. On the way to clinching the Rookie of the Year title last season, Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya was on the receiving end of some xenophobic abuse and Toyota's decision to enter a team for the first time also yielded plenty of ignorant comments from ill-informed fans. Conveniently ignoring the fact Dodge is now owned by a German company and Camrys are actually made in America, callers to radio shows voiced their concerns about the "Japs" using the racing business as a stalking horse to try to take over the country.
Against this bizarre background, Franchitti is fortunate to be one of three high-profile foreigners seeking this season to add even more diversity to a game where once upon a time all drivers hailed from the same handful of southern states. The presence of Canadian duo Jacques Villeneuve and Patrick Carpentier could lead to an even distribution of criticism. Depending on how they perform, the new arrivals will probably be accused of squeezing out American drivers and blocking the traditional route young talent has always taken from the dirt tracks of small towns to the big show.
Apart from the massive marketing boon, the newcomers are attracted by the fact NASCAR also offers greater longevity to drivers, with many competing at the top well into their forties. It will take the Bathgate-born 34-year-old some time to adjust. The cars are slower, heavier, and much more difficult to handle. Although he has garnered years of experience on the oval tracks that host the majority of NASCAR races, the racing itself is very, very different. The lead changes hands umpteen times and as can be deduced from the most beloved cliché "rubbin' is racin'", this is a full-contact sport. No quarter asked. None given.
"I think the real shock was at Martinsville, when I jumped in the truck and started to get bashed around a little bit," said Franchitti this week of his debut race in one of NASCAR's minor league events last October. "I was, like, oh, this is a bit more physical than I'm used to in an Indy car."
A bit more physical. On and off the track.
HOW THEY DIFFERNASCAR: has its roots in the daredevil drivers who raced modified production cars through the woods of south Carolina to deliver moonshine during the Prohibition period. Predominantly blue-collar fans are fiercely loyal, patriotic and frequently drunk. And those trailer trash just love a crash.
Touring car racing: perhaps the closest equivalent to NASCAR outside the US. While rules vary from country to country, most series require that the competitors start with a standard body shell, but virtually every other component is allowed to be heavily modified for racing.
Regulations are usually designed to limit costs by banning some of the more exotic technologies available and keep the racing close. In this, it shares some similarity with NASCAR; however, touring cars are actually derived from production cars while NASCAR vehicles are custom built. Touring cars race exclusively on road courses and street circuits, while NASCAR uses oval tracks.
Indy car: a generic name for championship open wheel racing in the US, it initially described a car that has participated in the Indianapolis 500.
Indy car racing historically tended to take place on high speed ovals. However Champ Car had no oval tracks on the 2007 schedule, while the IRL added street courses to an all-oval series.
Formula One: cars are faster, being a lot more expensive and technology-centric than their Indy counterparts, and are raced on street courses and flat tracks.
Retired former F1 champions such as Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Nigel Mansell went on to easily win Indy championships.
