Comments on: Red State Racing

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 17:21:37 +0000

That stuff is not “iced tea”…it’s gawdawful mouthpuckering sugarwater with a tea leaf briefly swizzled through it!

How dare you, sir?! I challenge you to a duel!

/Zell Miller Mode

Ahem. I apologize. Seriously, iced tea is great! And if you’ve never had a mint julep…well!

By: Outlandish Josh

Outlandish Josh — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 23:08:09 +0000

Note: it’s also pretty common for fans to have radios which can tune in the conversations between drivers and pit crews. There’s a lot of story, narrative, etc involved in the whole affair. It’s a combination of machine-driven specticle and personality-driven contest of wills.

I’m not a fan, but I don’t think I have any right to be snobby about it. To the untrained eye and without any sense of history, baseball is furiously boring to observe.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 15:11:49 +0000

I’ve not been interested in motorsports, though I have been exposed to them. The thing that gets me is that who wins always seems to be either the guy who won last time, or his son.

By: Allen

Allen — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 03:30:06 +0000

I liked watching cars races for as long as I can remember, and I used to race cars and motorcycles. Let’s consider those my bona fides.

That said, I’m not much of a Nascar fan. They kill far too many drivers and any more the races are as stage managed as possible and still allow them to be called competion.

If you want to see something amazing done with cars you should check out World Rally.

By: Mike Stiber

Mike Stiber — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 02:37:39 +0000

I thought it had something to do with scantily clad women and beer.

By: tom f

tom f — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 00:37:25 +0000

… but if ya grow up in the South, it’s just a part of life, like football, kudzu, football, ice tea, or football.

That stuff is not “iced tea”…it’s gawdawful mouthpuckering sugarwater with a tea leaf briefly swizzled through it!

By: JoeF

JoeF — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 23:54:15 +0000

I’m not a huge fan, but I worked in a sports bar for 4 years, and I know a bit about the sport. The personalities of drivers as seen by fans are based on two things: Driving style and the fan’s imagination. Some drivers are more aggressive than others (Dale Earnhardt Sr, Tony Stewart), others less so, and fans react to that.

Also, spending several hours in a car driving at the limits of the laws of physics is an intensely difficult task for the body to handle. The average NASCAR driver sweats away something like a gallon + of fluids during a race.

But yeah, I find the oval and oval-esque tracks less interesting than the road courses.

By: kamachanda

kamachanda — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:43:11 +0000

It’s a car culture thing I guess. Reptile brain and big powerful motors…. Around here the demolition derby is also big along with Monster Truck shows.

I’m not into any of it, maybe if someone would hold a Monster Truck Demolition derby, I’d go.

By: Roddy McCorley

Roddy McCorley — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:39:41 +0000

The appeal is simple:

Sometimes they crash.

Sometimes they crash, and go boom. Cooool.

(I used to watch racing, pretty much for that reason. I stopped when I got to be about 14 or so.)

A less visceral explanation might be that NASCAR’s devotees know they can’t slam dunk or throw a pass for shit. But they know they can drive a car.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 21:10:39 +0000

I suspect that, as with most sports, there is a dynamic interaction between competence and salience. The more one is exposed to NASCAR (substitute and sport) and the more one knows about it, the more interesting it becomes. Casual fans get sucked in by the superficial excitement of the possibility of a fiery crash (substitute hockey fight, home run, slam dunk, touchdown pass) and a few hang around long enough to become aficianados. One driver of the dynamic is identity with the culture that the sport claims to represent (just plain folks). Another is the prestige in one’s circle of being knowledgeable about a rather complex sport. NASCAR has done a great job of marketing and associating itself with other memes.