History of NASCAR

Nowadays, when people are tuning onto their televisions to watch NASCAR livestreams, they would soon notice that it was an advanced professional motorsport series. Full of experienced mechanics and crew chiefs, innovational designs and scrupulous safety measures. Even though it might not seem as elegant and gentle as traditional European racing series like Formula One, it would still be considered ‘peaceful’ compared to its relatively brutal origin.

Interestingly, NASCAR’s creation isn’t similar to any other motorsports around the world, where wise organizers, rich car owners, and professional racing drivers met together to establish racing series that persists until today, NASCAR’s founding moment was full of violence, recklessness and even illegality, which is also the foundation that crafts it in such a unique perspective. During the prohibition ages, alcohol and liquor were all banned, people couldn’t purchase them through normal grocery stores and were forced to withdraw their addictions. However, a lot of drunkards certainly could not adapt to this new environment, so they were desperately searching for underground illegal alcohol to satisfy their wants, causing demand for moonshines (illegal liquor) to skyrocket, and so bootleggers involved from such environment. In order for them to successfully make deals without being caught by authorities, they came up with thoughts that created NASCAR: building fast cars. These bootleggers would often adjust their Ford V8 engines to just provide them with a few extra horsepower so they can outrun the sheriffs during a police chase. As they became more and more proficient at evading cops’ chase, their driving skills would undoubtedly be improved too. Moreover, their targets were also expanded, when entirely aiming at police during the beginning, they now also turned their attention onto their colleagues, racing along with each other on highways and dust roads. After 1933, when prohibition was finally abolished, this culture remained and transitioned towards a more professional field of racing that we are more familiar with. They hired experienced mechanics to service their cars, operated events at venues to increase popularity. In 1935, the first contribution to NASCAR happened, when an organized stock car event happened at the city of Daytona, Florida. The mechanic who ran 5th at the end called Bill France discovered the future path of bootleggers, and he is determined to organize a racing championship exclusively for stock cars. After a decade of preparation, they finally came up with a set of rules for designated racetracks, and the first ever NASCAR race was hosted in Daytona again, on February 15 1948. These monumental events all happened at a single racetrack, which is also the reason why the season opener of the Daytona 500 can be such a crucial race to hold a victory trophy.

NASCAR’s unique characteristics, with cars circulating in ovals with an average speed of 250km/h+, and one of the only few series who still uses a primitive 5-speed manual gearbox, all these properties are tightly related to its original culture as bootleggers. When people are discussing about prohibition, they might simply regard it as a painful period or a failure, but they certainly overlooked a crucial influence: NASCAR.