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NASCAR Explained

Answers to all those questions racing around your head

Many new NASCAR fans wonder what is "stock" about a Winston (soon to be Nextel) Cup stock car. Some are unsure what "stock" really means. Even long-time fans may not know where and how stock cars are built. And few new fans know the roots of stock car racing. Read on and learn the answers to these and other questions. (Here's a quiz to see if you're a new NASCAR fan: Who is "The King"? "Jaws"? "The Last American Hero?" Answers at the bottom.)

What is "Stock"?

Originally, "stock" meant unchanged from the auto-showroom floor: The racecar came straight from an automobile dealer's stock. For more than 100 years, auto manufacturers have seen the promotional benefit of stock-car racing: "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday." For just as long, spectators have enjoyed the fantasy that they could take their personal cars onto the track and compete with the pros.

NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) was founded in 1947 and its Strictly Stock Division debuted soon afterward. But racing totally unmodified cars was an expensive, labor-intensive, cheater's paradise. Many production parts couldn't survive the strain of racing and crashing. Also, giant loopholes in the rules were opened by production tolerances of stock parts, as well as "special optional equipment" (read: racing parts) offered by the factories. So, NASCAR evolved away from "strictly stock." Heavy-duty truck parts were fitted to the racing coupes. Roll bars, designed to protect drivers when they tipped over on slow-speed quarter-mile dirt tracks, morphed into welded tube-steel space frames: birdcage-looking structures that took over the function of the stock frame. In the '50s, NASCAR cars still started life on a Detroit assembly line. By the late '60s, production pieces had dwindled to body sheetmetal, engine block, floorpan, and the core of few other parts, such as the rear axle and transmission. (NASCAR's technological evolution slowed to a glacial pace at this point.)

Today's Cup cars are "strictly race." A rear-wheel-drive, carbuereted-pushrod-V-8-powered, tube-framed, hand-built Cup car is more closely related to a '50s Indy car (or a current sprint car) than it is to a front-wheel-drive, fuel injected-overhead-cam-V-6-powered, stamped unibody, production-line Dodge, Chevy, Ford or Pontiac.

Stock Car 101

Today's stock cars start life as a pile of steel tubes, sheet steel, and built-for-racing components in, usually, a North Carolina race shop. Even the engine blocks are specially designed and cast for racing. Top teams build their own chassis and hand-form their own bodies, while the others buy these components from companies that specialize in constructing racecar pieces. Some parts, such as the nose bodywork, come from specific NASCAR-mandated suppliers. NASCAR's "common template" means body shape is virtually identical.

Because the teams do the final assembly, there are far more differences between individual Cup cars than between individual Indy cars, which are built in racecar factories.

Winston Cup's 358-cubic inch engines are the old-style cam-in-block "pushrod" type. Exact power output figures are a cross between liar's poker and closely guarded secrets. However, "about 800 horsepower" is a pretty good guess. That's almost twice as powerful as a road-going Dodge Viper. With that much power, Cup cars would probably run 230 mph or more at Talladega and Daytona, which would be unsafe for both drivers and fans. So, restrictor plates—thin aluminum squares with four small holes drilled into them—are inserted between the carburetor (an ancient device that mixes fuel and air) and the engine. This reduces the flow of air into the engine and limits power around 450 horses, or about the same as a stock Viper.

Roots and Rules

Cup rules require a minimum weight of 3,400 pounds—roughly equal to a Honda Accord V-6. To help the cars turn left on oval tracks, Cup cars employ a different suspension spring, shock absorber valving, and alignment setting at every wheel. This asymmetric setup means the drivers have to turn right in order to go down the straightaway; to initiate a left turn they need to do little more than release that input.

To reach its first level of prominence, stock car racing needed an unintended boost from the U.S. government in the form of alcohol tax laws. For more than 200 years, farmers in the hills and hollers of Appalachia have converted grain into alcohol to ease transportation to market. For just as long, the government has sought to close down these backwoods entrepreneurs. By the Thirties, in order to avoid apprehension while transporting their product to the big cities, moonshiners modified their cars with hot-rod engines, stiffened chassis, upgraded suspension, and big tires: exactly the same things you'd do today if you were building a hobby-stock race car. And they learned to drive. Fast. That's because they went to jail if the "revenuers" caught them. Many of NASCAR's early stars learned their trade this way.

When they weren't hauling white lightning, the runners went to the local bullring to see who had the fastest car and was the best driver. Some found it an enjoyable way to supplement their income. But it was far from organized until Bill France's dominant personality came on the scene. France not only organized these rules-averse individuals, but also succeeded in having them submit to his benevolent dictatorship.

By 1960, thanks in part to promotional help from the automakers, NASCAR's Grand National series—the forerunner of today's Cup series—had reached the top echelon of auto racing. But it was primarily a Southern phenomenon largely ignored by stick-and-ball-dominated sports media. The arrival of R.J. Reynolds' Winston brand as series sponsor in the '70s boosted the sport further, but it still wasn't the crossover success it is today. Many attribute Winston Cup's breakthrough to the arrival of in-car video cameras and cable television. The in-car camera allowed fans to vicariously put themselves behind the wheel. By the late '80s, virtually all Winston Cup races were telecast live on cable networks and fans could follow the sport without relying on the mainstream media. Other important factors were incredibly tight racing, and accessible, appealing, long-lived driver personalities.

There's nothing stock about stock car racing, but tens of millions of fans love it anyway-or maybe because of it.

(Answer to the quiz: Richard Petty is "The King." Darrell Waltrip got the nickname "Jaws" for obvious reasons. Author Tom Wolfe said "the Last American Hero is Junior Johnson".)