GIVE ME FUEL, GIVE ME FIRE
E-Mail   by Blake Pirtle  Bio/Address

    Ya know I had a couple of great ideas for this column: "Sports Behind Bars", a piece on the confederate flag, "Sport and Politics".  But this one is going to be about auto racing, mainly NASCAR Winston Cup Stock car racing, and you all have our dear friend Julie Zimmerman to thank for it.  In her last letter to me she ended the letter with a P.S. that auto racing is not a sport.  Huh?  No facts or information to back up that statement!  Well, I'm sorry to say, dear Julie, auto racing IS a sport and I am here to tell you why with a lot of facts and information.
    Not only is auto racing a sport, but it is, in fact, a team sport and has been the fastest growing sport in America for the last seven years.  NASCAR Winston Cup is the only sport in the United States that you could go to one of its 34 races a year and find 80 to 100 thousand fans there, and it is the only sport where 42 teams and drivers compete against each other every Sunday for one simple thing: TO WIN!!
    Now I know what a lot of people say and thing.  How could auto racing be a sport when all they do is drive around in circles?  Well, believe me, it is a lot more complicated than that.  One fact is that sure they do drive around in circles, but they do it at 150 to 200 miles an hour with 41 other cars on the track.  I get in a lot of arguments with people on this, and it never ceases to amaze me how narrow minded people can be.  My good friend, D.S., calls auto racing "White Trash Theatre".  He may be right in that a lot of the first drivers where moonshiners that wanted something more to do with their souped up, really fast cars.  But in present times there a re a lot of people dumping a ton of money into this sport.  Companies will pay anywhere from seven to ten million dollars a year to pain their product on a car with a good driver and a quality team.  But back to the facts as to why this is a sport.
    There are 50 to 60 Winston cup teams that compete every Sunday to race.  Only 42 make it.  A NASCAR Winston Cup Team consists of a lot of people.  You have fabricators, tire specialists, engine builders, fuel specialists, etc.  But the main core of the team is the pit crew along with the crew chief (like a coach) and the driver.  The first job for the pit crew, driver, and crew chief is to qualify for the race.  In this sport this is the most demanding part, for you get one lap, and if you are not fast enough or don't have driver or owner points to fall back on, you don't make it into the race.  You have one chance and if you fail the consequences could and will impact your whole season.  It could mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars and the championship points.  So you can imagine the pressure put on these teams just to qualify for the face.  And since time and speed are usually measured in tenths of a second, if you miss the set up of the car just a tad you will not make the race.
    There are so many things that Winston Cup team pit crews do to get a car ready for a race that there is no way I could go into all of them without boring you to tears.  That is, if you are not a racing fan.  But to me their most important job is the pit stops.  This alone proves they are indeed very impressive athletes, and it separates the quality teams from the so-so teams.  These athletes have to change four tires and put in two full cans of gas (about 20 gallons each) in less than 16 seconds, if possible.  Each tire weighs 30 to 50 pounds and the cans of gas weigh 80 to 100 pounds.  These athletes must jump over a three foot cement wall with tires and cans with a speeding stock car coming at them at 55 miles an hour, and once that car stops, they have to run to one side of it, jack it up, change two tires, grab the old ones, run around to the other side and repeat the process while the fuel person is putting in two full cans of fuel, and all this under 16 seconds for the whole process.  If they don't do their job as a team and aren't really good at it, they will lose precious seconds and their driver will have no chance to win the race.  When we think of team sports we often think of football, baseball, and basketball.  But Winston Cup racing depends more on the team than all these sports, for without these racing teams performing as one and at their very best, every single race the whole team would fail.  Only in auto racing can one not depend upon a singular outstanding performance.
    On to the drivers in this fine sport.  Not only are these men some of the most physical athletes you will ever meet, but the mental toughness they must have is extremely impressive.  Now I know a lot of you readers are thinking when you watch a race that you could do that.  No, you could not.  The only thing you would do in one of these cars or on one of these race tracks is kill yourself and others along with yourself.  Now I raced motor cycles as a teenager, and my dad raced them most of his life, so I know first hand the physical condition racers must be in to do this sport, for any type of racing takes a lot out of the athlete, not only physically, but mentally as well.
    Without the drivers and their abilities this would not be the exciting sport that it is.  These men not only drive these close to 4000 pound cars but they do it for 400 to 600 miles, and they are in that car on any given Sunday for three to four hours.  They race 34 weeks out of the year in all types of weather, from 40 degrees to 110 in the summer months, when it might be 90 or 100 degrees on the track and probably 130 in the cars.  On days like that drivers are known to lose 7 to 10 pounds during a race.  Not only do the drivers deal with weather conditions, they also deal with the 41 other cars, speeds of up to 200 miles an hour, the condition of the car: (it may be loose so that the back end of the car wants to slip out from under the driver and come around or it might be tight, which means that when the driver turns the steering wheel, the car does not want to turn).  They have to be alert to avoid wrecks, they have to hit their marks on their pit stops.  They do all this and so much more, all for a win and the most points possible toward the championship.
    So, if you combine the drivers and the team and the pit crew and everything they do, you have, in my opinion, one of the most exciting sports ever.  And why is this a sport?  It is very simple.  The team and the driver all compete for one thing, which is to win.  That alone makes it a sport.  It has a 34 week schedule every year, which shows great commitment and is also unique in sports.  Racing goes from February to the end of November, and people rarely get a weekend off, and only 2 months of down time a year, when, in fact, they spend a lot of that time testing at tracks and trying to improve their last year's performance.  Next year the schedule will go to 36 races so they will have to be even more committed.  The sport is so popular, cities and corporations can't build tracks fast enough to get a Winston Cup race.  The fans are incredibly committed and loyal to their teams and drivers.
    If you want to catch a race at Daytona or Talladega on TV, here are some dates:  July 1 on CBS at 8 pm, est and October 15, ESPN 1 pm est.  Check out one of these races and you will see 42 cars side by side, inches apart, at speeds of close to 200 miles an hour.

 EPILOGUE

     I write this epilogue with a very sad heart.  The day after I wrote this column, Adam Petty, age 19, a fourth generation stock car driver, lost his life in a crash, trying to qualify for a race.  The Pettys are stars of the sport and have been a part of NASCAR since its first race.  Adam was just starting his NASCAR career, but his great grandfather was the sport's first star, his grandfather is the all time leader in wins, and his father still races every Sunday.  Adam will be terribly missed, and not only his family mourns the loss, but all stock car facing fans all over the world.
    I didn't talk too much about the risk these athletes take in this sport mainly because the cars they race are by far the safest in all of racing.  But all risk will never be eliminated because when you are going close to 200 miles an hour and hit a cement wall, there is always going to be extreme risk.  This is one of the few sports in the world that the athletes know every time they get into a car they are putting their lives on the line.  They do it because it is something they love, something in their blood.
    I'll close with my favorite quote of all time.  The first time I read it  it made so much sense to me:  "By dying, I conquer life."

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