You will want to plan a pre-party, either the night before you leave for your trip, or with your friends that are going along, if you live near a track. The NASCAR party theme can be in the decorations and food, such as black and white checkered tablecloths, racetrack cake, (chocolate fudge brownies with checkerboard pattern cutout stencil to sprinkle powder sugar squares on top), diesel dogs, Petty pepperoni pizza pie, or blackened steak sandwiches and waffle fries. Get creative with it. You can take the grill and the black-checkered tablecloth and make it a tailgate party for just the two of you.

NASCAR tracks are scattered around the country, and the price of their tickets vary as much as their location. Kansas Speedway offers a one-of-a kind, Sprint Fan walk, for the pre-race experience at $15.00 a head. You can watch mechanics in the pit area, get autographs, (be sure to bring a camera, a permanent maker and plan to buy a Nascar t-shirt to have the drivers sign, for a lasting souvenir.) Many other tracks also sell pit passes.

Then there are the tickets, they can range from $15.00 for grandstand to over $200 for great seats-per person, so you need to check the location you are planning to attend. There are several NASCAR ticket websites, just use your search engines to find the ones that offer the cheapest. They also sell the pit passes and parking passes.

If the NASCAR track is not close enough for same day driving, then you are going to need a hotel room, aw-shucks! Yes, but before you get too excited, it could “cost ya’ a pretty penny”. Hotel rooms are normally marked way up for an event because they know they will sell out, so unless you plan to sleep in your car, plan ahead, make lots of calls and plan to shell out some dough. Some hotels offer race packages that include tickets, lodging, shuttle service to the track and maybe some other perks. These packages are usually multi-day, before and after the event and can cost several hundred per person, but are worth the convenience.

So in summary, a NASCAR date needs to be planned out with a little notice depending on how far from the track you are. If you have a number of friends going, you can contact the track for group ticket pricing and maybe rent an RV or camp to save money. The cheap date package is still going to set you back about $100 per person, (camp, hotdogs, beer, park and grandstand tickets). The over-the top will be several hundred per person. Be ready for some loud noise, not much talkin’ going on, shuckin’ out some dough, and a fun time!

G.O.P. candidate Rudy Giuliani made an appearance at Daytona International Speedway over the weekend announcing – “I want a ride in a pace car.”

Giuliani spoke to reporters in the garage stall of Rusty Wallace Racing, wanting to climb in one of the team’s race cars. Rudy was denied the opportunity because, according to Rusty Wallace, Giuliani wouldn’t fit through the window. “I said, ‘Rudy, the problem is I’m too big to get in there, and you’re too big to get in there.”

Wallace told reporters, “If he’s really serious about it, I’ll find a car for him to get in. He wants to get in the real car and get on the race track.” Rudy ended up riding in his campaign bus around the track but vowed to return during the campaign to hitch a ride in a pace car.

Kevin Harvick, the defending Daytona 500 champion said Monday (January 21) he started watching MSNBC coverage of the presidential primaries and said he found it “pretty entertaining.” “Politics is a dirty sport,” Harvick said. “I thought our sport was backstabbing. Man.”

During a news conference at Daytona International Speedway, where the second week of Sprint Cup testing got under way Monday, Harvick was asked if he has a favorite among the Presidential candidates.

When asked about the Democrat candidates, Harvick replied, “No, please. I don’t want my president to cry,” referring to Sen. Clinton, who misted up on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

Who does Harvick like? Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican.

“I like Huckabee, to be honest with you,” Harvick said. “I just like the way he presents himself and the way he talks. Giuliani has been to a lot of NASCAR races, but I just like the way Huckabee presents himself – whatever that matters for.”

Let’s burst the redneck Nascar fan myth and look at why politicians will continue to romance Nascar fans.

According to a NASCAR survey, published in 2004, about 40% of fans are female and their numbers are rising. About 75% have attended college and more than 25% own their own homes. About 36% of NASCAR fans make more than $50,000 a year.

Surprised?

NASCAR fans are evenly distributed across the country. For example, 20% of NASCAR fans live in the Northeast U.S.; this is in line with the general population. 20% of the U.S. population lives in the Northeast.

While the largest base of NASCAR fans live in the Southern U.S., only 38% of the NASCAR fans live in the South. Again, this is in line with the general population. 35% of the population lives in the South.

If you think that most NASCAR fans are redneck and caucasian, think again. According to the same NASCAR survey, about 10% of NASCAR fans are African-American, which is a slightly smaller percentage of Blacks than in the general population. This compares to the NFL, where Black NFL fans represent about 11.7% of the total NFL base.

The percentage of African-American NASCAR fans has grown by 86% since 1999. There have also been some attempts by NASCAR to bring in more African-American fans into the seats, and drivers into the races. The survey did not indicate what percentage of fans are Hispanic.

What can we conclude? Nascar fans are everywhere and number in the millions. In a close race, they could make the difference as to whom is chosen the next President of the United States.

Jim DeSantis

History of NASCAR

NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) really started back just before Prohibition, when hillbilly moonshiners up in the Appalachians found out that the revenuers’ cars were fast enough to get the jump on them. Illegal stills started getting busted, and shine makers started going to jail. Instead of buckling, moonshiners moved their stills further back into the woods and down in the hollers, and they started using cars.

When Prohibition came into effect in 1920, moonshiners started looking beyond outwitting the tax-collecting revenuers and toward shipping ’shine to the cities for real profit. Gangsters – Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Capone – started making contact with these good ol’ boys to see if they could get a steady supply of alcohol for their speakeasies and other businesses. And young men, usually the sons or nephews of established moonshiners, started working with stock cars to get the ’shine to town as fast as possible.

These, our redneck forefathers, modified the cars they ordered from magazines or purchased from fledgling dealers in towns to run faster, harder, on rough and smooth surfaces. They experimented with using ’shine as a fuel for a boost in speed, and invented many of the tricks used today in NASCAR. Junior Johnson, one of NASCAR’s earliest legends, spent years running ’shine for his father using scampish tricks later mimicked by Burt Reynolds characters and the Dukes of Hazzard. He invented the famous bootleg turn, the 180-degree spinout sending you careening in the opposite direction, that is used in nearly every movie car chase today, and later as a NASCAR champ discovered how to “draft” another driver to increase his own speed and reduce fuel consumption.

NASCAR was officially born in 1948, a merging of this wild redneck tradition with the more upscale Grand Prix racing imported from Europe, in which mostly concept cars and special sports cars were raced. William France, a racing mechanic, had a notion that stock cars would draw crowds in America, and he incorporated NASCAR in Daytona, from which it quickly grew to the giant it is today.

Today’s NASCAR, industrialized and streamlined and watered down for general consumption, is only a pale imitation of the free-for-all madness our bootlegging ancestors first drove.

NASCAR Rules

While the first NASCAR stock cars were completely unmodified stock cars, the same ones you’d buy off the lot, today’s cars are modified according to strict safety and performance rules.

The rules in NASCAR are both simple and complex. Drivers in the top 43 of each race accumulate points according to a set system. Cups are awarded according to who has accumulated the most points in a set group of races. The Sprint Cup (usually just called the Cup, as it was previously the R.J. Reynolds and the Nextel Cup) is the big prize, and is awarded after a set of 36 races. Other smaller cups are awarded for other groups of races, and each major race has around $4 million total in prize money awarded for that race alone.

Points in the major races (but not all NASCAR races) are awarded not only to the race winner but to each lap leader. If you’ve led at least one lap, you automatically get five bonus points; if you lead the most laps, you get an extra five, for ten bonus points total. Points go to the driver who started the race (replacement drivers get nothing) and to the car owner. Races are generally prefaced either by qualifying trials or by heats, small races that get the crowd warmed up but don’t count toward prizes. Starting order is determined by qualifying time.

The track, once started, is slowed down by yellow caution flags for fender benders, spills, etc.; if something catastrophic happens, the red flag will come down to stop the race until wreckage can be cleared. Green flag means everything is fine. And in most NASCAR races, you’ll see drivers pull off for at least one pit stop; the pit crew works fast to fuel, check, condition, and change tires because the time in pit counts against your time on the track.

A NASCAR Date

So now you have that redneck sweetheart and you really want to impress him? Set up a date for one of the smaller NASCAR races, with barbecue and and chips for your refreshments. Beer is a must, and for that special touch, ask your liquor store for some ’shine, which should be drunk straight but in moderation. Dress any old way you want, park him on the couch, and let him explain all the finer points of the race to you while you both enjoy the race.