Daniel Keene Jr. In ASA Southeast Asphalt Tour - Video Showcase

"A stock car, in the original sense of the term, described an automobile that has not been modified from its original factory configuration.

Later the term stock car came to mean any production-based automobile used in racing.

This term is used to differentiate such a car from a race car, a special, custom-built car designed only for racing purposes.

The most popular cars seem to be the Chevrolet Monte Carlo and Chevrolet Impala. The cars have adopted larger spoilers so that the air passes smoothly over the car to provide a larger downforce over the back of the vehicle to prevent the car from flipping over. All cars have this spoiler.

When NASCAR was first formed by Bill France, Sr. in 1948 to regulate stock car racing in the U.S., there was a requirement that any car entered be made entirely of parts available to the general public through automobile dealers.



Daniel Keene Jr's 5K Toyota Camry stock car photo - courtesy of Keene Racing

Additionally, the cars had to be models that had sold more than 500 units to the public. This is referred to as "homologation".

In NASCAR's early years, the cars were so "stock" that it was commonplace for the drivers to drive themselves to the competitions in the car that they were going to run in the race.

While automobile engine technology had remained fairly stagnant in World War II, advanced aircraft piston engine development had provided a great deal of available data, and NASCAR was formed just as some the improved technology was about to become available in production cars.

Until the advent of the Trans-Am series in 1967, NASCAR homologation cars were the closest thing that the public could buy that was actually very similar to the cars that were winning the national races."

"The most prominent championship in stock car racing is the NASCAR championship, currently named the Sprint Cup after its sponsor Sprint Nextel,
and previously known as Strictly Stock (1949), Grand National (1950-1970),
Winston Cup (1971-2003),
and Nextel Cup (2004-2007).

It is the most popular racing series in the United States, drawing over 6 million spectators in 1997, an average live audience of over 190,000 people for each race.

The most famous event in the series is undoubtedly the Daytona 500, an annual 500-mile race at Daytona Beach, Florida[citation needed].



Photo of 1995 Daytona 500 courtesy of Kyle May

The series' second-biggest event is probably The Brickyard 400, an annual 400-mile race held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the legendary home of the Indianapolis 500 of the Indy Racing League, an open-wheeled racing series.

NASCAR also runs the Nationwide Series,
a stock car junior league,
and the Craftsman Truck Series, a junior league where pickup trucks are raced.

Together the two car-based series (Nextel Cup and Busch Series) drew 8 million spectators in 1997, compared to 4 million for both American open-wheel series (CART and IRL), which merged in 2008 under the IRL banner.

In 2002, 17 of the 20 US top sporting events in terms of attendance were NASCAR races. Only football drew more television viewers that year."

"NASCAR stars take various paths to the highest stock car divisions.

Some start racing on dirt surfaces but all end up racing on asphalt surfaces as they progress in their career.

They frequently start in karting or in cars that are completely stock except for safety modifications.

They generally advance through intermediate or advanced local-level divisions.

The highest local division, asphalt late model racing, is generally considered a requirement to advance to the next step, regional and national touring series.

Dirt track drivers follow the same general path. Their highest divisions are less well-known national touring late model series such as the World of Outlaws Late Model Series and regional touring series."

"While the challenges of driving and setting up the cars around near-identical banked ovals are probably fewer than learning varied road circuits[citation needed], the aerodynamic factors giving advantages to a tactically-savvy driver lead to contests which bear some resemblance to some forms of track cycling, particularly at large oval superspeedway tracks such as Daytona and Talladega.

In particular the aerodynamics ensure that cars which are following each other both have less drag than either car alone.

The car in the front of a chain has slightly less drag at the rear of his car than when driving alone, while the car in the rear of a chain experiences a dramatic reduction in frontal aerodynamic resistance (called drafting).



Photo of Chicagoland Speedway track courtesy of geognerd

This is an important strategic advantage for team drivers, as the rear driver will get significantly better fuel consumption which will allow fewer re-fueling stops.

Therefore it is in the drivers' interests to cooperate in forming chains of cars with low drag.

However, a driver must at some point end cooperation in order to win the race. The combination of cooperation and non-cooperation leads to some very sophisticated strategic decision making between team members and competitors alike.

Also it should be noted that the tracks, at least those used by NASCAR, are not identical, with some being oval, some being tri-ovals, one being essentially triangular, and two of them in fact being road courses that are also used by road racing series.

At many of these tracks, the drafting tactics described above play little factor. More so, at the grassroots level, most stock car races take place at short tracks, where these aerodynamic effects are negligible."

Photo of African American Race Car Driver, 1920s and quoted text below courtesy of discoverblackheritage


"In the 1920s, a group of black sportsmen created the nation's single largest sporting event ever held by and for African Americans: the Gold and Glory Sweepstakes, a series of 100-mile auto racing events held through the U.S. from 1924-1936.

On August 2, 1924, an estimated 12,000 spectators crowded into the grandstand at the Indiana State Fairgrounds dirt track to celebrate the single largest sporting event ever held for African Americans. There they witnessed a 100-mile spectacle that attracted newspapers and newsreel agencies from all over the country."