The Hindu Business Line : Gentlemen's mean machines

Driving on a hot Sunday morning towards Michigan Speedway, about 114 km southwest of Detroit, I hit the slow moving traffic near Brooklyn. The two-lane road had pylons forming two up lanes and one down lane. On arriving at the race venue, I was amazed to see the swarm of cars parked on the undulated terrain.

One big family

The atmosphere resembled that of a big carnival happening far outside the city. Just outside the grandstands were parked the souvenir haulers of each driver. The official event merchandise consisted of T-shirts, mugs, key chains, stickers, pins, towels and many more. The race girl bus was busy selling merchandise and collectibles for the women.

Also available for sale or rent were scanners with headphones. Fans used these scanners to listen either to the team's radio or to the officiating officers on exclusive channels. The race fans can thus listen to their favourite teams and get closer to the action.

Fans also come equipped with binoculars, seat cushions and drinks in coolers. Barring myself everybody had a driver or team to support. The track, unlike in Formula One racing, is a 3.2-km tri-oval with 18-degree banking at the turns. I was amazed at the infield, the area enclosed by the track.

For an infield ticket, fans get a parking lot where they park their recreational vehicles and perch on them on special platforms. For some of them this has been home for the past three days during the practice and qualifying sessions. Each recreational vehicle puts up the driver team's flags and car number it supports. Patrolled by security personnel the infield looks like a mobile township.

The programmes commenced with the introduction of the 43 teams. Four fighter planes did a flypast when the national anthems of the US and Canada were sung.

The famous Michigan wave was started by first tapping the feet and then waving hands from one end of the stand to the other and back. Fireworks indicated the commencement of the race. It was time for `stock car' racing...

From the hot rods

The term `stock car' means production cars used for race purposes, though this is history now.

Stock car racing is truly an American sport. It was born during the 1930s when hot rods began to race in the dirt strips of the southern states of America. However legalised stock car race was born after an auto mechanic, Bill France, organised local businessmen to race in the shores of Daytona Beach.

Soon he created his own sanctioning body to unite all racing under one set of rules, which ensure close competition. Thus the NASCAR, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, was officially incorporated in 1948.

Harold Brasington, a resident of Darlington who loved racing, wanted to build a 2-km paved speedway to conduct 800-km races. He individually moved and piled the dirt and rock for the banking and set up the fence and grandstands. On Labour Day in 1950, Brasington under the sanctioning of France's NASCAR successfully hosted the race at the Darlington Speedway, thus graduating from dirt racing to speedway racing.

Today NASCAR has a tight bunch of events each year in separate divisions, like the Nextel series, Busch series, Craftsman truck series to name a few. NASCAR is still fully owned by the France family. Their company owns famed speedways like the Talladega, Darlington, Watkins Glen and Daytona International Speedway.

The NASCAR experience

The Nextel cup race started with the "Gentlemen, start your engines!" official signal. The pace car similar to the safety car went ahead for two laps and as it pitted, the 43 neatly packed race cars went thundering down the track. The 140,000 spectators at the speedway stood up, as the stands shook with the rumbling sound of the 720-hp V8 engines.

The pack of cars speeding inches close to each other put us on the edge of our seats. The crowd cheered and waved for their favourite drivers with some capturing the action on digital cameras.

As Robert G. Hagstrom says in his book The NASCAR Way: "You need not become a diehard fan and attend every race to appreciate stock car racing, but you have to go at least once, for you will never fully enjoy the entertainment of NASCAR racing until you have stood in the stands and felt the thunder."

There were nearly 10 caution periods in the race. Most resulted due to the cars bumping each other or skidding against the sidewalls. Many cars take advantage of the caution periods to go to the pits, and some of the trailing cars even make up for lost laps thus making NASCAR more competitive.

After the race, it's time for the tailgate parties. The fans go behind their pickups, drop the tailgates down, and out come blasting stereo systems, canopies, generators, and the turnkey fryers cooking their favourite steaks.

Elsewhere huge transporters were busy ferrying back those mean racing machines. And helicopters flew around transporting drivers and race officials back home, bypassing the traffic jams.

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