NASCAR Then and Now - Ben White [20]
This is the calm before the storm. The pre-race prayer is a tradition that runs back to the first NASCAR event more than 60 years ago.
Years ago, the featured musical guest was usually the local high school marching band. Today’s events draw some of the top acts from various forms of entertainment.
The modern version is organized with efficiency on par with a military parade.
The national anthem offers a few final moments for the drivers to be with their families before the race gets underway.
The moment reaches a crescendo with a flyover by fighter jets. In this case, it’s the six F-16 Fighting Falcons that make up the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds demonstration team.
Chapter 6 Let’s Go Racin’!
Whether it’s the 1969 Daytona 500 (below) or the 2005 Banquet 400 at Kansas Speedway (right), every NASCAR race starts with a series of laps behind the pace car. These are essentially warm-up laps, run at 30 to 80 miles per hour (depending on the track), allowing engines and tires to get up to temperature. They also give the drivers a few moments to prepare themselves mentally for the job at hand. One difference between the pace laps of today and yesterday: The drivers of yesteryear were alone with their thoughts and the rumbling of their engines. Today’s drivers are connected to their crew chiefs and spotters via two-way radio.
Green Flag!
In football, basketball, and hockey, it’s a referee’s whistle. In baseball, it’s the umpire’s call to, “Play ball!” In stock car racing—and in nearly every other form of motorsports—the competition begins with the wave of the green flag. It’s the time-honored tradition that gets the 43-car field up to speed and down to business.
This wrinkled old photo has seen better days; maybe it’s too rough around the edges to even use in a book. But it’s a perfect shot of a moment in time long past. The race starter (at right) is standing inside the track waving the green flag to begin a modified race in the early 1950s. The track looks as if it was cut out of a vacant field. Note the barn on the hill in the distance.
Today, the act of waving the green flag is still the same, but it’s done from a flag stand raised high above the track where the whole field can see. At today’s Sprint Cup races, the honor of starting the race is usually given to a celebrity, dignitary, or other honored person. The thrill of standing just a few feet above a roaring stampede of stock cars as they come up to speed is an experience they will remember for a lifetime.
Rubbin’ Is Racin’
To a driver, track position is everything. For hundreds of laps throughout a given race, drivers work hard to find any advantage possible. At times, that advantage comes with the help of the car beside them when they “lean on” a fellow competitor to help get through a turn. Other times, it’s two drivers going for the same piece of real estate. The result is sheet metal grinding together and decals and sponsor markings taking the brunt of the impact. To the race fans in the stands, rubbing fenders or sides with another driver on the short tracks serves as something of a badge of honor. It means their favorite driver has no reservations about fighting and clawing for position. In the end, it may mean the difference between winning and losing.
With dirt flying and fans just a few feet from the action, Buck Baker (No. 300), Junior Johnson (No. 55), and Ralph Moody (No. 12) battle for position around a lapped car during a Strictly Stock race at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway on July 1, 1956. In the end, Lee Petty would take the win in a Dodge.
Close racing is one thing that will never change in NASCAR, especially on short tracks such as Richmond International Raceway, shown here. NASCAR’s modern racing machines are built to withstand the bumping and banging that goes along with these door-to-door, wheel-to-wheel slugfests without any significant loss in performance. Shown here in the heat of battle are Jeff Burton