One Helluva Ride: How Nascar Swept the Nation - Hardcover

Clarke, Liz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345499883 ISBN 13: 9780345499882

Verlag: Villard Books, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Incorporating interviews with some of the sport's most popular drivers, past and present, a history of NASCAR looks at the reasons behind the phenomenal growth in popularity of the sport, tracing its history from its southern roots to the present day, recounting some of its greatest moments, and assessing changes in the nation's fastest-growing sport. 50,000 first printing.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A sportswriter for The Washington Post, Liz Clarke has also covered NASCAR for USA Today, The Charlotte Observer, and The Dallas Morning News, and was twice honored with the Russ Catlin award for excellence in motorsports journalism. She spent four seasons as a Post beat writer on the Washington Redskins and has written extensively about the Olympics, tennis, and college sports. A graduate of Barnard College, she lives in Washington, D.C., with her beloved Lab, Rusty.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1
A Hardscrabble Past

A full moon rose over the backstretch of Charlotte Motor Speedway the night of NASCAR’s 1992 all-star race, The Winston. It was the first time that a stock-car race would be run at night on a 1.5-mile superspeedway, and illuminating a venue massive enough to hold eight National Football League stadiums demanded a feat of engineering so monumental that the company that lit the movie Dances with Wolves was hired for the task.

Night racing on such a huge scale was the idea of the speedway’s president, H. A. “Humpy” Wheeler, a master showman who had never run a competitive lap himself but was determined to give NASCAR ticket-buyers—mostly shift-workers who lived black-and-white lives by day—Technicolor entertainment once they walked through his gates. As an undistinguished member of the University of South Carolina’s football team in the 1950s, Wheeler had watched in awe from the bench when the Gamecocks visited Louisiana State University for a Saturday-night game. LSU had its mascot, a live tiger, spitting at spectators and clawing the air from the sidelines, and the effect made Wheeler’s hair stand on end. That was the feeling he wanted to replicate at his race.

Wheeler’s second agenda was getting his track’s biggest race, the Coca-Cola 600, out from under the shadow of the Indianapolis 500—its rival in the battle for TV viewers on the crowded Memorial Day weekend. If Wheeler could figure out a way to run his 600-miler at night, it could have its own niche in prime time and no longer have to compete head-to-head with Indy.

As Wheeler geared up for his bold experiment in NASCAR’s future, an all-star cast of drivers strapped in for its heart-stopping present.

The hotshot Davey Allison, son of NASCAR’s 1983 champion Bobby Allison, was on the pole, having run the fastest lap in qualifying. The legendary Richard Petty, stock-car racing’s “King,” was in the field, along with his son, Kyle. So was the man chasing Richard Petty’s record seven NASCAR championships, Dale Earnhardt, the local hero from Kannapolis, North Carolina, considered the meanest cuss ever to wheel a stock car.

The Winston wasn’t part of NASCAR’s twenty-nine-race regular season, in which drivers collected points toward the championship. It was a novelty event, named for the flagship brand of series sponsor R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and scripted for sheer entertainment, with a $500,000 payout to the winner. In The Winston, all that mattered was winning, not salvaging points or even salvaging the car. The top drivers had a fleet of new racecars back at their shops. From their 700-horsepower engines to the sheet-metal skin that was hand-sanded to aerodynamic perfection, the cars on the starting grid had been built for one performance only.

It was as pure a form of racing as there was—a flat-out dash for cash—on as spectacular a stage as NASCAR had ever seen. Would Wheeler’s lighting system work, turning night into day, as he promised? Or would it skew depth perception as drivers hurtled into the corners at 185 miles per hour?

From the moment the green flag dropped, magic filled the air. The brightly painted racecars shimmered like jewels under the lights, heightening the sense of insane speeds as the cars zoomed past. But NASCAR’s most faithful audience hardly needed daylight or slow motion to pick out their favorite. Even at a high-octane blur they could spot Dale Earnhardt’s black No. 3 from a mile away, and not only tell you it was a Chevrolet with “the Intimidator” slouched and smirking behind the wheel, but they could also identify every corporate sponsor on Earnhardt’s driving suit, reel off his wife’s name (plus the two ex-wives) and the names of his four children, and point out where he liked to pass on the track.

The black-and-red No. 28 was a Ford Thunderbird driven by Allison. At thirty-one, Davey was the most successful of a crop of second-generation racers who represented the sport’s future, as well as the front-runner for the season’s championship.

Piloting the black-and-yellow No. 42 Pontiac Grand Prix was Kyle Petty, stock-car racing royalty on the cusp of forging his own place in the sport. Petty was as affable as Earnhardt was ornery, with long hair and a pierced ear that clashed with stock-car racing’s mores of the day. But he was a Petty, and that alone was reason to pay homage.

Petty’s streaking Pontiac had surged to the front when the white flag signaled one lap to go, with Earnhardt closing fast as they barreled down the backstretch. Earnhardt always said that the only lap that mattered was the one that paid money, and he looked hell-bent on taking it. Fans had seen him do crazy things to win this race in the past, including ducking onto the infield grass to fend off a charge from Bill Elliott by taking a shortcut to the finish line in 1987—a move that sealed his reputation as the nerviest driver in the garage, considering it’s as impossible to control a racecar on grass as it is on an ice-skating rink. And they were all on their feet, clamoring for another amazing feat of daring.

Petty had no idea what Earnhardt had in mind. He had looked over at his nemesis when they dueled side by side earlier in the race, and all he saw was Earnhardt’s bushy mustache grinning back at him. “What in the hell is he grinnin’ about?” Petty thought to himself. “What does he know that I don’t?”

They entered Turn 3 of the final lap locked side by side. Earnhardt had the outside lane and was pinching Petty low on the track, testing his nerve to force him to lift off the throttle. At that point, there was nothing left for Earnhardt’s pit crew to do but watch.

“We were beat,” crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine recalled, laughing at the memory. “We didn’t have the fastest car, so we knew Dale was going to do some desperation thing that probably doesn’t work. And it was gonna be cool!”

Petty kept it mashed to the floor, and suddenly the black No. 3 spun and smacked the wall. No sooner had Petty vanquished Earnhardt than Allison surged into view. His path now clear, Allison whipped alongside Petty entering Turn 4, and the two banged doors as they raced to the checkered flag. Allison nudged his Thunderbird’s nose ahead for the victory, but his car bobbled the moment it crossed the finish line and slammed the wall, sending showers of fiery sparks in the air. When the screeching and crashing came to an end, both cars were torn to pieces, and Allison sat slumped and motionless in his seat, knocked unconscious by the blow.

Back in the garage, where the also-rans climbed out of their cars, Petty was swarmed by reporters clamoring for a firsthand account of the last-lap mayhem. He had barely launched in when Earnhardt stormed toward him, reared up to well over his six-foot height, raw emotion spewing from his pores like steam from a sweltering city street. Reporters froze, unsure whether they were about to witness NASCAR’s Intimidator cuss the King’s son or punch him in the nose. Instead Earnhardt broke into a huge grin, flung his arm around Petty’s shoulders, and gushed, “Great racing, man! Great racing!”

Over in Victory Lane, an argument broke out between Robert Yates, owner of Allison’s team, and an ecstatic Wheeler over whether the mangled Thunderbird would be hauled in on a wrecker for the customary postrace photographs. Wheeler wanted to immortalize the slugfest, while Yates, distraught over his driver’s condition, thought it was in poor taste and blocked the wrecker’s path with his body. Meantime, Miss...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Villard Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0345499883
• ISBN 13: 9780345499882
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 293
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar