NASCAR

NASCAR
 
If war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, then NASCAR is surely the USA’s way of teaching the rest of the world motor racing.
 
The banked, two mile oval of an American Speedway circuit is the coliseum of the new millennium; burgers and stock cars the bread and circuses of the 21st century -a raucous, red-necked, testosterone-fuelled arena for those who still enjoy their entertainment delivered pretty much as it was 2000 tears ago. Blood and guts may not be the absolute given it was in the dubious days of a claws versus loin-cloths, Christians and lions confrontation, but with a 43 car strong field lapping at an average speed of some 190mph mere inches from solid concrete and the impending gleam of a monstrous shunt keeping spectators’ eyes glued for the full 500 miles, there are plenty of guts on display at all times.
 
Judging by the throng gathered at the California Speedway for the Auto Club 500 race this weekend, guts of the beer variety also put in a commendably strong showing at National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing meetings, which, given that this is a sport founded on the illicit distillation of hooch, seems entirely appropriate.
 
Stock Car racing in the USA has its origins in bootlegging during Prohibition, when drivers of machinery seriously modified to outrun the law distributed bootleg whisky made in Appalachia. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 did nothing to assuage Southerners’ thirst for either moonshine or fast cars, and the business of ‘runnin’ shine’ continued unabated. By the late 1940s, however, the pride and profit associated with racing the cars themselves began to outshine the allure of paint-stripper alcohol in such rural southern states as Wilkes County, North Carolina, and when mechanic William France Senior jotted down a points system for ‘stock car’ racing on a bar room napkin in Daytona Beach, Florida in February 1948, NASCAR was born.
 
Despite studious efforts to disguise my rookie status -IQ reducer crammed on cranium, Juicy Fruit taxed jaw and back of neck daubed an appropriate hue (I recommend ‘Volcanic Splash 4’ from the Dulux colour chart)- I feel very much the stranger in a strange land at the California Speedway, where the second meeting of a relentless, 36 race, 41 week season is about to get underway.
 
All aspirations of Formula 1 style, white-heat-of-high-technology racing should -along with the hope of finding anything to eat which hasn’t first been vigorously deep fried- be parked outside the arena. NASCAR is, first and foremost, all about entertainment, and the organisers have left nothing to chance in ensuring that the outcome of not only every race, but also the entire season, goes right down to the wire… In which other motorsport season do they draw a line under every driver’s points with 10 races to go, issue the top 12 with 6000 each to ensure only they are eligible to win the championship and, lobbing in a few bonus points to establish a whiff of grid hierarchy, instigate ‘The Chase’?
 
In an equally strenuous effort to level the automotive playing field, this year also marks the introduction of the ‘Car of Tomorrow’ to NASCAR’s premier division, the Sprint Cup. Closer inspection, however, reveals this machinery to be very much the car of yesterday. Power comes courtesy of a ‘small block’, 358 cubic inch (a whisker under 5.9 litres) V8 with a cast iron block, two valves per cylinder, push rods and one enormous carburettor, clattering out about 850bhp at 9,500rpm via a 4-speed manual transmission. For a manufacturer such as Toyota, new to NASCAR and more familiar to electronically controlled, fuel injected Formula 1 engines revving to double that, this surely must constitute something of a giant stride backwards. Then again…
 
Happily, closer inspection proves very much the order of the day here since, unlike Formula 1, where you need to have your nose a considerable distance up Bernie’s bottom to be afforded even a sniff of the pit lane, both teams and drivers seem entirely attuned to mass pit invasions at various stages of the weekend.
 
Anyone still harbouring even the faintest suspicion that a Sprint Cup car adheres even remotely to the once sacrosanct NASCAR tenet of racing manufacturers’ ‘stock’ off-the-shelf machinery has only to witness the deliciously down-beat scrutineering process to be thoroughly disabused. Save for minuscule differences in nose treatment designed to infuse proceedings with the merest whiff of Chevy or Charger, bodyshells –checked for dimension via a series of templates and with discrepancies rectified on the spot through the high-tech medium of, um, the lump hammer- are identical. Even the front and rear lamp clusters are simply stick-on decals.
 
Aerodynamics involve little more than a splitter at the front and a small rear wing, adjustable from zero to 19 degrees, whilst the suspension is set up so pissed for the purposes of simply turning left for 250 miles that the cars look as if they’ve already endured more than one brief encounter with the concrete.
Indeed, the only similarity between these cars and their distant, bootlegging ancestors seems to me to be that the drivers still have to climb in and out of the window; a spectator pastime which, for me, has palled more than a tad since Catherine ‘Cut-Offs’ Bach stopped doing it on the telly.
 
You can see the whole of the circuit from pretty much any of the 100,000 plus grandstand seats cosying up to the average American Speedway, but the best place to watch is at the exit of the mysteriously named ‘Turn 4’. My first experience of oval racing was at an open-seater, CART meeting in Michigan a couple of years ago, where cars were in full drift through turn 4 at over 200mph with a little light oversteer keeping them about 5 degrees off kilter. NASCAR speeds may be some 30mph down on that, but it still looks, frankly, absolutely terrifying. And don’t take my word for it: One Johnny Herbert was ambling round the paddock on that Michigan weekend looking for someone to play with, and was told by Dario Franchitti “Don’t go and watch from the outside of the track; you’ll never want to get in a car if you do…”
 
In common with every NASCAR outing, even the ubiquitous, American double-act commentary team seemed to be there for the thrill of the ambulance chase. When one car snapped sideways at 230mph during qualifying and destroyed itself with such vigour against the concrete that the subsequent pattering of decimated car components against the tsunami of catch fencing sounded like someone firing a shotgun at a giant harp, the eerie, post biff silence was punctured by the giggling duo telling us that it was “…one of those situations where your hand gets trapped in the wheel and the bones just start snapping; ahahahahaha.”
 
Which makes it all the more surprising that Dario Franchitti is one of the increasing number of overseas drivers happy to climb into a Sprint Cup car. Particularly in light of the fact that most of America’s 75 million NASCAR fans consider anyone who isn’t born in North Carolina to be a foreigner, and the likes of Franchitti and one Juan Pablo Montoya might as well hark from outer space. However, it must be said that the booing which accompanies Montoya’s introduction here probably has less to do with xenophobia and rather more to do with the fact that he clipped this year’s Daytona 500 race leader Clint Bowyer into a spin just 15 laps from the finish.
 
The fan base here is entirely driver focused and, surprisingly, couldn’t give a hoot if their hero is driving something foreign which purports to be a Toyota. NASCAR merchandising nets a cool $3 billion per annum and, behind the grandstand, jostling for position with the chewing tobacco stalls (I know you should try everything in life once except incest and folk dancing but no, mercifully, I didn’t), every driver is represented by his own articulated lorry load of appropriately branded merchandise. And when the fans aren’t buying, they’re eating. Every conceivable variation on the botulism-in-a-bun theme is available and, I might add, gently disappointing. So the notion that you’ll get a good burger wherever you go in the States is now right up there with the premise that Starbucks can teach the rest of the world about coffee.
 
Some circuits visited by the NASCAR circus actually boast ‘All You Can Eat’ stands, and one assumes most regular takers buy seats in pairs, one for each buttock. Gentlemen, start your angina.
 
And it’s loud. Consistently, relentlessly loud. Not the cars, you understand… America can’t do silence, so the instant engines are silenced the commentators are at full fact-tastic gabble, interspersed with piped heavy metal and, of course, advertising. Even the litter here appears to be sponsored, and the commentary team must constantly interrupt the day job to remind us that the grass is mown by Gatorade or of the soothing merits of Preparation H. ZZ Top turns up to play a lunchtime gig before the main event and I’m not sure, against this already deafening backdrop of blather, that anyone even notices…
 
Then rain. In California. NASCAR doesn’t do rain. So NASCAR sends out a fleet of trucks each armed with the auxiliary jet engine from a Jumbo jet strapped on the back to dry the track, inch… by… remorseless… inch. Four hours and 8000 gallons of fuel later, it finally gets properly, seriously loud.
 
With a grid size double that of Formula 1, even the clattering, off-beat tickover of 43 cars idling in the pit lane before the rolling start sounds like a vastly over-amplified troupe of 1000 Kodo drummers each marching to a different beat. Once the hammer goes down, however, the racket is absolutely astounding. I had though that a low level fly-past by a Vulcan took some beating, but this din instantly relegates the V-bomber to midnight mosquito status, swatting it aside with a visceral, chest thumping roar of almost physical ferocity; the enraged bellow of a pre-menstrual Godzilla taking it out on the Chrysler Building.
 
To begin with this wall of sound hurtles off briefly to the other side of the oval but, lapping every minute, the leaders all too quickly catch the tail enders and the roar becomes relentless. Thankfully, partial aural relief is at hand through the renting of a scanner; a short wave receiver with headphones and a built in TV screen, on which you can listen in to your favourite driver arguing with his pit crew about the state of his tyres, or watch re-runs of your favourite accident. Tune into Montoya’s frequency, on the other hand, and it simply sounds like a crackly, Linguaphone tape exclusively dedicated to rare South American swear words.
 
You can even listen to a driver’s spotter guiding him through traffic. Three abreast on a bend at 180mph with all-round visibility akin to that of a medieval knight in full armour, drivers rely entirely on their spotters to report on the position of surrounding cars. Perched high on top of the grandstand, the spotters’ concentration is absolute. I consider a brief chat with one, but the succinct message scrawled on the band of his headphones –‘Don’t Even F***ing Think About It’- suggests less painful methods of suicide are available.
 
The first pit stop surfaces so fast I’m not sure the whole grid has actually crossed the start line yet, but it’s entirely worth the absence of the wait. Used to a scant 7, Formula 1 aficionados will doubtless rubbish 12.5 second proceedings. But a NASCAR pit stop is gob-smacking, pit bull choreography involving one man jacking up alternate sides of the car whilst two more unzip five bolts with an air-gun, throw a scorching hot, 65lb wheel over their shoulders as if it were crumpled chip wrapper and then do up five more on the fresh tyre before repeating the process on the other side of the car. It’s no wonder that every member of the pit crew is built like a condom stuffed full of walnuts and, for once, the high fives and posturing that seem to accompany the successful completion of even the smallest task in America are entirely justified.
 
Simultaneous refuelling requires no fancy rig, just a man with a big can hoisted on his shoulder to let gravity run its course, so slowly that can, and man, are frequently forced to accompany a car bellowing back out of the pits. Quite how, with a system so archaic, teams can lie so assuredly to their drivers over the radio about having calculated that their fuel will last the remaining laps is beyond me.
 
Not that many of the cars will last the remaining laps at this rate: Water seeping back out of the seams in the banking has just instigated a massive, aquaplane sponsored shunt, and the drivers are back in the pit lane and out of the cars, suggesting that they’d rather have a mid-race conversation with a rival’s spotter than get back in again. And proof of the fans’ entirely driver focused obsession is promptly evinced by at least 50% of them ambling disconsolately away from the grandstand as Dale Earnhart Jr’s car emerges from the wreckage, considerably the worst for wear.
 
A word on drafting, and bump drafting, while we wait… Though in evidence throughout the NASCAR calendar, drafting techniques are most prevalent at Daytona and the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, where the circuits are so fast that the cars run with restrictor plates fitted to the carburettor intake to slow them down. This means they’re so evenly matched for pace that you need an edge. And that means not only drafting, in which a convoy of three cars literally rubbing bumpers so dramatically alters the aerodynamics of the group that all three go faster, but also bump drafting, which effectively constitutes a timely punt up the luggage. And that’s how this year’s victor won the Daytona 500; being rammed at the best part of 200mph by his team mate gave him an extra 9mph or, shoving him ahead of the car alongside to take the win.
 
Out on the track, bits of passenger jet once again yell into action whilst, astonishingly, a crew armed with disc cutters assault the track in an effort to channel the water off the banked surface. This does the trick. It takes three hours, but it does the trick. By which time night has fallen, and racing resumes under floodlights…
 
Not many motor races last for the best part of 24 hours these days, and absolutely none of them involve a 14 hour break in which the drivers go home for a snooze. But, with the rain once again lashing down this evening, this year’s Auto Club 500 does. And by the time a race involving 33 lead changes by 15 different cars finally runs its course, I’m several miles overhead reacquainting myself with the parts of a Jumbo jet NASCAR has yet to find a use for. I’d love to have stayed for the finish, but even half a Sprint Cup race is more entertaining that an entire season of Formula 1. And, besides, I’m absolutely desperate for a decent cup of coffee.