Everybody Loves NASCAR

I had the boys by myself all yesterday, and we were having a boy’s day out. While driving to the park in the afternoon, I heard on the radio (classic rock station!) that a NASCAR race car was at a store in a local shopping center. I caught the name of the shopping center, but I missed the name of the store and the car. I asked the boys if they’d like to see a real NASCAR race car in person, and got an enthusiastic, “Yeah.” So I turned to head for the shopping center.

We found the car at a new AT&T store: Jeff Burton’s #31. I parked the van and we all got out. There was another family—dad, mom, two boys—looking at the car when we walked up. Both my boys wanted to run their hands all over it, and it was all I could do to just limit them to touching it only a dozen times each.

Like most NASCAR cars, it had the main sponsor logo (AT&T) on the hood, and two dozen other names and logos stickered all over the place. The thing that surprised me about all the stickers (the headlights and taillights are stickers, too, in case you didn’t know—I knew they weren’t real) was that they actually were stickers. I thought they were a paint job on the car body. I thought they’d peel off in the wind of 180 mph speeds, but I guess they don’t.

We looked inside the car and saw all the dials, safety restraints, electronics, and hoses that surround the driver. (I had to hold the 2 year old up to see inside.) When the boys weren’t looking at me, I pulled up one of the wind flaps on the roof just to feel it. (The flaps that come up if the car spins around—they help slow the car when it’s out of control—I don’t know if “wind flap” is the actual name.)

We spent about ten minutes looking the car over, and we were ready to go. I walked over and asked one of the guys in the AT&T racing outfits (Jeff Burton, himself, was not there) when they were going to crank the car up and put it back in the trailer.

“At 6:00,” he answered.

“Okay,” I said, “we’ll try to be here.” It was 2:00, then, so we had four hours before the sound show started.

Asking this question was something I learned from my dad. It’s been many, many years since I last saw a NASCAR race car in person—Richard Petty’s #43. Since then, I’ve only seen and heard them on TV. But my dad has seen a couple in the past few years, and he mentioned being present when they cranked the monster up.

So we boys went about our business around town. At 5:30, I remembered I wanted the boys to hear the car run, so I hustled the three of us back to the van. It took every minute of the 30 we had to get back to the AT&T store. The car was still there, sitting quiet in the parking lot.

There were about a dozen other people hanging around looking at the car—half of them parents, the other half young boys. As we got out of our van, I explained to my boys that when they crank up the car, it will be very loud. I didn’t want either of them startled by it when it fired up. We, all three, again went over the car with eyes and hands until I could tell the crew was getting ready to pack it up. I herded the boys to the curb about 12 feet from the car. The other families in the crowd also backed away from the car.

One of the crew took down the window net and climbed in slowly. Once settled in, he flipped a switch. The car made a whirring sound like an old car on a cold morning. Whirrwhirrwhirrwhirr. . . A guy in the crowd commented that it sounded like his own car. The crew guy kept it going for probably 20 seconds, and then the engine erupted to life. BOOMRUMBLERUMBLE. . . I bet that didn’t sound like his own car. Hot damn, but that is a powerful sound. It sounds like a metal popcorn machine, but faster, and a thousand times louder. The crew guy revved the engine a couple times and I could feel the vibration coming from the engine. That’s the sound of around 800 horsepower under the hood—awesome!

The sound brought another half-dozen people from around the stores and parking lot to come look and listen. I had my hand on both boys, and they seemed to be mesmerized by the car; neither seemed scared or nervous. The car sat and rumbled for several minutes, much to the enjoyment of everyone around, except maybe anyone inside the stores trying to shop or work.

The driver pulled the car out of the parking spaces it was spread across and moved into the driving lane between. He backed up a bit and then motioned for one of the bystanders to come to him. After their brief, shouted discussion, the bystander waved and shouted for the people near the car to back away. I didn’t see why everyone had to back away, as no one was in his way to the truck trailer. But once everyone had backed up, he showed us his intentions.

He put the hammer down and spun the back wheels so that gray smoke swirled around the tires; he laid down dual eight-foot, black streaks in the road. The squeal of the tires and the smell of rubber filled the air. Hot damn, again! Fantastic! Then he slowly drove to and into the travel trailer.

To think that the NASCAR drivers, like Jeff Burton, sit in those powerful machines for hours, at upwards of 200 miles per hour, with a dozen other cars going the same speed just feet or inches away from them. I had a respect for race car drivers already, but seeing the car, hearing the sound of the engine, and feeling the power radiate around it, really impressed me.

As the crowd was dispersing, some guy, not a part of the original crowd, with a cell phone up to his ear, shouted, “Jeff Burton sucks! Tony Stewart is the man! Home Depot car all the way!” Geez, but does there have to be an idiot in every crowd.

As we got in the van, my 6 year old son said, “That guy that yelled doesn’t know NASCAR.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Everybody likes all the drivers in NASCAR,” he explained.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com