NASCAR Nation by Chris Myers Read Free Book Online Page A

the American people. These are driven men, in business and in sports. They go from one thing to the next. They climb one mountain, stand on the summit, and look for a higher mountain. NASCAR is one verytough mountain to climb, but if you want to be the very best, it’s one from which you can’t walk away.
    These are not the days of Richard Petty when the competition was lower and one star could dominate the track. The competition is fierce and the cars are expertly made. That’s what makes drivers like Jimmie Johnson and teams like Hendrick Motorsports so impressive. Being able to dominate for five years in the face of such strong competition requires that they never lose their edge. Winning isn’t easy in NASCAR. And winning the Daytona 500 – with the costs of car engineering and maintenance, the logistics of sponsorship, the challenges and risks posed to drivers, and the length and difficulty of the championship – could be said to be more difficult than winning the Super Bowl or the World Series.
    Taking the current economic climate into consideration, looking at the neutralized state of the NFL due to salary caps, and the financial pull of baseball teams like the Yankees, it’s difficult to say how easy or hard it is to take a championship when there’s so much going on. Yet if one could somehow have the same amount of money to work with and the best talent, winning a NASCAR race would certainly be more difficult. Granted, in the World Series you have to win four out of seven, which can be a great challenge for a team. A lot can happen in that time. Yet in motorsport racing, there is so muchless control over what’s going to happen – out on the track or inside the car. Drivers and teams don’t have a great deal of control over the track, the car, or the competitors’ vehicles. There’s no telling what can happen – a blown tire, a wonky malfunction, or a sudden turn in the wrong direction by the car next to you can mean the difference between first place and twenty-first.
    In NASCAR, you could win races most of the year and find yourself dominating the sport – then in those last ten races end up in an unexpected wreck that may not even be your fault. Your chance at the championship can vanish in a matter of minutes. It’s the unpredictable nature of driving and of relying on a machine that makes NASCAR so difficult as a sport. Yet the car is the essence of NASCAR – you can’t say NASCAR without car, just as you can’t picture the United States without them.
    Many Americans grow up around cars. I know I did. My father worked on cars as did his father. There are generations of proud Chevrolet and Ford owners in the United States, and they’re often the same people who follow NASCAR and will do whatever they can to support American growth. That’s what’s so admirable about them. Of course, this strong devotion to U.S. business can occasionally lead to misunderstandings – like the fans’ resistance to Toyota signing on as an official NASCAR sponsor. Manyfans, who are natural supporters of American business and advocates for keeping jobs in the United States, didn’t want that invasion. Even Jack Roush, the founder, CEO, and co-owner of Roush Fenway Racing, was resistant to opening the doors to an international car company before doing everything possible to make sure that we were supporting American business and economic growth. However, since Toyota actually works with Ford, we don’t have to sacrifice anything by having them sponsor NASCAR. It doesn’t mean that we’re un-American and that we’ve lost our roots. NASCAR
is
America’s roots, and keeping a hold on those roots is vital.
    Personally, I think it was smart of NASCAR fans to show an initial resistance to this change. These are people who connect to American cars and corporations. Again, it all goes back to patriotism. The hands-on,