Take away the pit crews, loud exhausts, and corporate sponsorships, and what is left are people travelling in circles to see who will finish first. The real oddity of the "sport" however, is that through endless rules and restrictions, the cars on the track are so similar, they differ only in color scheme. Literally, every car is forced by NASCAR rules to perform exactly the same. To expand on the track and field motif, NASCAR is comparable to watching 40 Steve Prefontaine's duke it out for 4 punishingly identical hours. Except there are no athletes... only "drivers". Guess what? I'm a "driver" too. I got my driver's liscense when I was 16 and I've been driving ever since.
So it begs the question: why do our redneck friends from the south live and breathe NASCAR? After additional contemplation, I believe the answer is a simple one. As previously stated, NASCAR is as much about the car as MTV is about music. NASCAR fans watch to see a mind game in it's simplest form. It's almost as if NASCAR is a redneck version of checkers. I use checkers due to the fact that checkers is the only board game played by rednecks that isn't produced by Hasbro and targeted towards 12 year olds. NASCAR fans cannot identify with the intellectually heavy mind games of a well crafted mystery novel or the genius of a well played hand of poker. Instead, they identify with the simple mind functions behind racing cars in big circles. I would say to each their own, but do the rest of us "normal" people really need to be exposed to your "sport"?
My advice to all is to simply ignore it and avoid the irreversable mental damage 4 hours of running circles can do to a developed mind. The day NASCAR evolves from carbon copied cars running in circles into a team sport that actually utilizes mechanical and driving skill is the day I will start paying real attention. Until then, I'd rather watch checkers.
Sam, you're not "normal" :)
ReplyDelete"NASCAR fans cannot identify with the intellectually heavy mind games of a well crafted mystery novel or the genius of a well played hand of poker." Thank you for generalizing a fan base, but there is a lot more to a race than you are letting on. Hell you say that Nascar fans can't identify with the intellectually heavy mind games of a well crafted mystery novel, or the GENIUS OF A WELL PLAYED POKER HAND?!? Honestly, your going to say that a genius hand of poker played, bluffing your opponent into thinking you have a better hand then he does when you really have a pair of rags or tripping up your opponent into betting as if you are relatively weak when in fact you hold the nuts can be genius, and yes, it is fun to watch, but there is a lot more to NASCAR than you are letting on, you just have to be able to grasp what you are watching, rather than deciding its just a redneck sport that "normal" people don't watch. Just like a poker player makes decisions to check bet or call and how to play into the odds of the pot, and whether to play a monster slow, or bet hard into a draw, a driver has to decide how hard to drive the car, drive it too hard too early, you wear out the tires, but wait too long to push it, and you could be too far back to have a shot. Heck that decision only comes into play at the end of a game, the real questions arise when considering when to pit, whether to take tires fuel, make adjustments to try and keep up with the track, or to not touch a well handling car and risk the track going away on you. Each car may be similar, but there is more to the car than just the bodies, the chassis are all different, yes certain pieces are mandated by NASCAR, but there are obvious differences in setup allowed. Different drivers race different, and have to be raced different. There is a heck of a lot of strategy involved in a NASCAR race, sorry if its too complicated for you to understand.
ReplyDeleteAlso, on the topic of race car drivers as not being athletes,
Sanjay Gupta…the same guy that President Obama considered to be Surgeon General of the United States. Not just some NASCAR fan that is willing to comment willy nilly on a health issue.
"There's this perception out there that NASCAR drivers are beer-swilling, cigar-puffing, pot-bellied guys making a bunch of left turns every Sunday for a few hours," Gupta said. "I didn't really understand until I started looking into it the degree of athleticism and the toll that being a NASCAR driver takes on your body. That was what was sort of most striking to me.
"Talking to a lot of sports physiologists, you understand that race car driving, NASCAR driving, has the same demands physically on the body that a long-distance runner, a marathon runner, has, for about the same length of time. I thought that was very interesting."
"The incredible strain on the human body from the heat, g-forces and the mental focus is like nothing I've seen before," Gupta said.
and
With 30 years of experience in motorports, Dr. Stephen Olvey, director of the neurosurgical care unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, was determined to show that race car drivers measured up to traditional athletes.
Olvey found that on an oval track like NASCAR's, drivers sustained heart rates 80 to 85 percent of their maximum, similar to the heart rate of a marathoner.
Yet his findings were met with skepticism. Doctors and scientists attributed the spike to adrenaline and hormones; what an every day driver experiences in a "near miss."
Olvey then joined forces with Dr. Patrick Jacobs, an exercise physiologist at Florida International University in Miami. The two set out to measure a driver's oxygen consumption. What they found was that drivers used the same amount of oxygen and energy as a long-distance swimmer or runner.
Anyway, with that rant off my chest, I am a Duck fan, and student, and am from Oregon, so I'm not just some southern Redneck....
http://www.allstate400atthebrickyard.com/news/5597/Speedway_At_Heart_Of_CNN_Special_About_NASCAR_Driver_Fitness
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/10/03/NASCAR/index.html
And by definition, if you really want me to be technical, a sport is a Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively. Stock Car Racing, and Motorsport in general, is a Physical activity, governed by a set of rules and is often engaged in competitively and therefore is a sport.
An athlete is "A person possessing the natural or acquired traits, such as strength, agility, and endurance, that are necessary for physical exercise or sports, especially those performed in competitive contexts." A motorsport driver possesses the natural or acquired traits, necessary for a sport, therefore is an athlete.
Also, to say that you are a "driver" too because you got your license means nothing....Until you go 160 around a track experiencing the G-forces pulling on your body, and the heart and exertion, stating that you are as good as they are means nothing.
Heck, another question......is a baseball player really an athlete, the pitcher maybe, but unless you go by definition, I highly doubt you could consider a 1st baseman, or DH an athlete, I mean, he doesn't really have to run fast or throw hard, he just has too have good coordination and he can be considered a good player. But it is never questioned whether they are athletes....interesting.
In response, I think you may have missed the point of my post. I in no way meant to form any sort of rational or intelligent argument for the sake of honest discourse. My post was a JOKE, meant to get a chuckle or two out of the people who identify NASCAR with the stereotypes I talked about.
ReplyDeleteI fully understand the physical toll a 200 mph race car making several G-Forces on a track has on a human being. I myself consider drag racers athletes, so that goes to show you the extent to which I hold motor sports as athletics.
Had I really believed what I was saying, I would have pulled out charts and statistics like you have, but the fact is that I really don't feel like convincing anyone of anything. My goal was to entertain, no more.
Sorry if I struck a nerve and remember that it is OK to laugh at yourself every once in a while, and that includes NASCAR fans.
I apologize for going over the top, I had a midterm that day, and was a little grumpy at the time, so reading that set me off. I didn't recognize it as a joke, then again the midterm, combined with the studying and minimal sleep may have helped impair my judgment a little (or a lot)...I do know that its ok to laugh at the stereotypes, but I hate it when people argue that point as if its true, as it furthers the stereotype, although that picture doesn't help matters..but it is funny (the picture).
ReplyDelete