Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire NASCAR - Question about

Now there is about as big a load of BS as I've seen lately, even for the Campfire!! LOL

Cars weigh more than cars run in Europe and other places.

Indy and F1 cars have a crap load of down force.

Besides stock cars typically are not totally sealed up and leak water like a sieve.

And the wipers make the cars look gay.

Can you come and talk to my garden in a few weeks? I'll save a fortune on fertilizer!
Jerry

16bores BS blew stickfights BS out of the water.

We are in the company of BS masters it seems.

I am pretty sure he was being facetious.

I grew up at the time NASCAR was nearly unknown unless you were a “car guy”. Before the ‘79 Daytona 500 and later, cable tv with ESPN coverage, you read short, maybe a paragraph reports in the paper, and maybe if you were lucky, highlights on network tv. If you wanted stock car racing, you had to make the effort to follow it. The fight at the end of the 79 Daytona race made racing popular enough to get national attention for the sport!
Later on, ESPN put NASCAR on the map in the 80s and 90s. Their coverage was pretty good, and they did a lot of behind the scene stuff that made it very interesting for car enthusiast or bored tv viewers!
I also remember several incidents where somebody blew up or got wrecked, and had a microphone shoved in the window before they had a chance to turn on their public image! Words got bleeped, and guys got fined for acting human on camera!
NASCAR was starting to change. Mopar and AMC had already quit, because rules were made to favor other brands and make a better show. Olds and Pontiacs became unknown, because if you didn’t have big bucks and factory support, it was much harder to be competitive.
Then the France family started to auction off tv rights and canceling races at smaller more interesting tracks to get into bigger money market areas. ESPN’s great coverage was sacrificed to network money and advertising. Long supporting fans who lived near tracks like Wilkesboro and even Darlington lost opportunities to see races so people from Chicago or California would buy t-shirts and toys. The France family turned their backs on fans, carmakers, and racetrack promoters who helped them grow so they could make more money from people who never heard of NASCAR a few years ago.
They pretty much killed my interest. I watched occasionally, but didn’t want to spend hundreds of bucks to attend pro races when $12 or $15 got you a night of local action with guys i knew.
I wasn’t a Earnhardt fan, but you still had to admit his talent made things happen. When he died, the connection to the old days died as well.
If you’re an old guy like me, and remember honest to God cars turned into racecars, and honest to God competitors who loved racing at its base level, the flavor was gone. We who raced locally called it “studio racing” or WWF Wrestling on Wheels. Most of us spent our Sunday afternoons working on racecars, not watching it.
Putting up lights and racing on Saturday night took longtime fans out of local seats for national television coverage, and us local drivers, most of us ignored it altogether.
I would never sacrifice a true friendship in order to bow to people who paid better. I got the same respect for NASCAR now that I’ve got for politicians.
7mm

Because this is America not Europe.

Somebody should start a thread asking why we don't hoist a surrender flag as readily as they do in France.

You think that NASCAR is a race-- it is a show!
The show must go on!
Folks do not want to sit in the rain--

We were in a restaurant last year and they had some kind of races on tv. They looked like modified factory cars, mostly jap or European, and they ran on road courses that actually had part of the track made up of dirt or clay.
I think it’s called “Super. Cars” but I don’t know for sure.
Even around here, Hobby racing on dirt or asphalt is going to pot. It just costs too much money if you wanna be competitive. The only modified cars you see are street stock and bomber classes, usually cars from the 70s or 80s. All the upper class cars are purpose built racecars from the ground up.
My brother and I were lucky in that Dad had an auto salvage. We took a couple old V8 Chrysler’s out and welded in frame connectors and roll cages. The motors were completely stock. We put in new rings and bearings, and put the valve covers on the wrong side, otherwise the oil on the right side blew out the breather! In 25 laps of left turns, you can throw out well over a quart of oil! Ask me how I know!
It cost a lot of money for Wheels and tires, but everything else we did come out of the junkyard. Even with that support it was hard to be competitive. It’s fun but it’s expensive.
Now, with Dad gone and the salvage closed, it’s just too damn expensive. I’d love to do it, but I don’t have the money or the resources and shop to work out of, and Wifey’s got no interest in it. I devote my time and money to shooting and hunting.
Most new cars have all the personality of a washing machine or a refrigerator now, so it’s a thing of the past for us. Most of the guys we raced against either give it up or got sponsors with bigger pockets. Car dealerships or well financed auto repair shops.
I learned two things in my years on a dirt track:
1 You can only go as fast as your wallet can afford to!
2 The best way to make a little money racing is to start with a helluva lot!
7mm

At the Le Mans 24 hour race, cars pass each other (in blinding rain) at 160 mph. The race has four classes of cars racing (some can do over 200 mph, while some "production" cars can do 150 mph), so passing speeds vary even with the very limited visibility. Accidents do occur, but they still race - isn't that what's racing all about?

Huhh? Are you saying that the Europeans are more gutsy than NASCAR drivers?

Yes he is but they're still better than Commie Queers from Colorado.

First sumbitch to hoist that flag gets shot in the nut sack!

You have a good point , dis.

The way I’ve heard the 24 hours of Le Mans is that it’s the equivalent of motorcycles’ Six Day Trials (enduro) event.

Iirc, Paul Newman was quite a competitor at the 24 hours annual race.

And the fastest lap at Le Mans lap is 155mph, so that means they also had a lot of slow areas of driving. The fastest completed 500 mile race at Daytona alone is 177mph.

There is a reason why even Indy cars don't run ovals in the rain. High banked oval tracks, rain and racing don't work well together.

Le Mans doesn’t have any cambered turns to speak of. Any way you cut it Le Mans is a punishing test of men and machines.

NASCAR tries to keep their events more fan centric. In Lemans how much of the race does the average fan get to see? How about Bristol?

This ain't Europe, and I am glad it ain't. No Euro-envy here.

No envy involved here. Watching something for 24 hours is akin to listening to the annual Iditarod for the duration.

I did really enjoy “Ford vs Ferrari “, though.