STORY AND PHOTOS BY
BRIAN OGDEN
Kyle Larson’s crew prepares their tires in the garage area.
NASCAR fan. That’s a phrase I never thought I’d use to describe myself. So how did I go from believing the stereotypes to buying into a sport I never considered a sport? The road to fandom started in Tuscaloosa, ran through Talladega and ended in Charlotte last week.
In Tuscaloosa, I live with a NASCAR fan. My roommate Zach is all in on this NASCAR thing. He’ll spend hours re-watching old races on YouTube or running full-length, 200-lap races on his PlayStation game. Along the way he roped the rest of us in with his trivia questions, history lectures and fantasy league.
Yes, there is a NASCAR fantasy league. In fact, I just had to take a break from writing this to set my lineup for this week. The Lone Star Leaders have been struggling all year.
In April, I headed to Talladega to cover Honors College student Tyler Audie’s performance in the ARCA race for Mosaic. Sitting on pit road to watch the race, I was amazed. It wasn’t the speed that was so impressive to me. I, perhaps foolishly, thought, “You know, I could probably handle a car at 100-plus mph and turn left.” More on that in a minute. What really shocked me was just how close together those cars were. Imagine tailgating somebody so closely that a person couldn’t stand between your bumper and the car in front of you – at 170 mph and with no brake lights. Sounds like a recipe for a major wreck, but these guys do it all the time!
A lot of people don’t see NASCAR as a sport because they don’t think of the drivers as athletes. After all, the car is doing all of the work, right? What can you do if somebody else’s car is just faster than yours? I’ll admit I was on the edge of this camp. I was willing to credit the pit crews as athletes easily, but the drivers? After seeing just how difficult their job is though, my mind began to change.
We were given the opportunity to sit in on the radio broadcast at the Charlotte Knights’ game.
Last week, I had the opportunity to travel to Charlotte with The University of Alabama’s public relations department. Along with 13 other students – mostly PR majors, but we had one other journalism major and a human environmental sciences student, I took professors Kenon Brown and Randall Huffaker’s one-hour NASCAR Communications Academy course.
After multiple guest speakers and class projects dealing with NASCAR over the past two years, I had some interest in how they ran their media operations. I’m studying sports journalism and work in media relations, so this trip seemed right in my wheelhouse. I’ll be honest, again, I wasn’t that interested in the NASCAR part of the trip. It was one hour that would allow me to graduate in December instead of having to wait for the spring semester, and I was more interested in the side trips than the main NASCAR activities. Along with everything the folks at NASCAR had to offer us, our professors arranged for us to meet representatives from the Carolina Panthers, Charlotte Knights (the Chicago White Sox’s Double-A affiliate), SEC Network, ESPNU, the Charlotte Sports Foundation (which operates the Belk Bowl), the PGA and the Sports Business Journal.
Wednesday was the main event for our trip, NASCAR’s Communications Academy, a conference for both media professionals in the sport and students hoping to break into sports media. Throughout the day, I learned a ton about the distinct challenges NASCAR faces that other sports never have to consider. Imagine if your job required you to work in a new city every week. That’s what the race teams have to do as they travel around the country from track to track. Everyone kept talking about how the sport is growing and telling us how much we were going to enjoy the All-Star Race on Saturday. They encouraged everyone to go to one race and find their hook – the thing that would flip that switch and make you a fan. For some it’s a certain driver, the company that sponsors a certain car, the number on the door, the colors of a car and yes, admittedly, for some it’s the wrecks.
So what was my hook?
The pit crew challenge was my hook.
Well, it actually came before we ever got to the race. Friday morning, we headed to the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which is a wonderful experience that I would encourage everyone to check out. The museum features multiple interactive exhibits. Remember how I thought I could handle a racecar as long as there were no other cars around? One trip, or should we say three trips, through the qualifying simulator proved me wrong. I say three trips because I had to make three attempts, including three barrel rolls, to actually finish a lap and get an official time. That official time was required to step into the simulators with my group and race them all for five minutes. Again, I never finished a lap. Thanks guys. Just remember in real life those wrecks hurt both of us.
My hook came down to what proved to be my favorite interactive exhibit: the pit crew challenge. I just want to say, those guys are awesome. A few of them took time out of their day to chat with our group, and about half a dozen members of three-time Sprint Cup Series champion Tony Stewart’s crew hung out in a garage with us for an hour to wait out a rain delay. But when you actually experience the work they do, you gain so much more respect for them. Not to mention, it was so much fun.
The group poses for a photo with driver Kyle Larson.
The challenge was to jack up the car, fill a tank of gas and change a tire as fast as possible. You could compete solo or in teams of two or three. The Alabama group put up a good showing, not to brag or anything, but both our team of three and our team of two made the leaderboard for the fastest time that day. Jason Wasserman, a senior from Kennebunkport, Maine, and I competed as a team of two and were even faster than we were when Huffaker was on our team finishing in 11.83 seconds. Roll Tide.
So here I am, someone who never thought he’d be interested in NASCAR, and I find myself wishing we had more than just one hour to explore the Hall of Fame. Watching races now, I’m still amazed just how close those drivers get at those speeds and how little room for error they actually have. Give NASCAR a chance. What will your hook be?
