what first got you interested in nascar?

Question

for me it was the 79 daytona 500. the first race ever shown live from start to finish on tv. but the highlight was cale fighting the allison brothers on national tv. i knew right then i was hooked.

Answer 1

Live in the county that holds Atlanta Motor Speedway,a better part of my life.... Still do !!! But got the chance one day, to meet David Pearson,while my step-father was doing some sheetrock work down at the track,and it was the sound of those engines that caught my attention. HEMI's back then !!!
Imagine a 8 yr. old kid standing close to one of those,when it started up lol. I ran like h***.!!! still get teased about that !! But,from that day on,I was hooked....a little shak'in up,but hooked lol

Answer 2

Back in the 1950's somewhere around the age of 4 or 5, I heard my Dad mention the name Speedy Thompson and the phrase "won the race". Naturally, as a very young boy, that name captured my attention.

Speedy became my first favorite driver and thus began a lifelong bittersweet addiction.

Bittersweet because the sport has brought great elation and terrible despair to my life as well as almost every other emotion known.

In a nutshell, the sport represents my greatest hopes and biggest fears. Success, misfortune, life and death. No other sport delineates human life in such clear lines of demarcation.

I know of no other sport where my concerns are not only will my favorite do well but will they survive?

It doesn't matter so much if they win as long as they can walk away when it's over. Anytime they do, it was a good race.

Answer 3

I guess I just grew up with it. I live in the Midwest and weekends were full of sports. Dad had the baseball games on in the summer and when that wound down, it was a fight between my parents over whether to watch football or racing. (Mom is a lifetime Cowboys fan.) I would watch baseball with dad and then pick his side in the Sunday argument. NASCAR sure is a lot more exciting to me than football.

If I couldn't watch baseball, I wanted to watch NASCAR. When I was younger, it was more about the "holy crap" factor when they wrecked and "how is he even still alive", because as a kid that kind of stuff is cool (like all those action movies that aren't much more than watching building blow up). As I got older though, I started to learn a lot more about the cars and the difficulty of the sport itself and that's what keeps me watching. I don't have a favorite driver (unless you count my weekly fantasy pick) or a favorite owner or anything like that, I just like to watch 'em run around the track.

I didn't even see my first race at a track until this year. My dad took me to the Busch series race in Joliet. If I hadn't been a fan already, that would have turned me into a fan straight away. There's nothing like the way the track vibrates when all that horsepower thunders past you. My goal is to go see a Bristol night race in the fall. Nothin' better.

Answer 4

It was in the summer of '95. I was only 10 at the time. A good friend of mine helped me get interested in NASCAR since he and his family attended races frequently.

I was instantly hooked just by watching on TV. Seeing all the cars with their shiny paint schemes. After watching everything for awhile I understood different things that were happening like all the strategies the cars were racing on.

I went to my first race a year later, the 1996 Brickyard 400. Hearing the cars, smelling the racing fuel, it's addicting.

Answer 5

!960 Dixie Speedway,Midfield Alabama.Had been watching late model modifieds there.
The NASCAR traveling show came in with about 16 cars,Race won by Ned Jarrett and one of the more notsble items from the race was the fact that 3 Pettys raced(Lee,Richard,Maurice)
Now 47 years later I still love to watch NASCAR.

Answer 6

I believe I was flipping through the channels and I saw a Busch race on t.v. the race was at T.M.S and it was rained out. I think it was David Green driving the #37 Wolf Pontiac that won the race, but thats all it took for me to get interested in Nascar.

Answer 7

My Mom has been a fan of Jeff Gordon, since he started racing at the Cup level. She always watched at the race, but it was never a big deal. At some point I guess she decided one of her children should like it too, so I watched the Brickyard 400 in 2004 with her and was hooked. Since then we don't miss a race on TV, we have season tickets to Texas and we go to a new track every year. We get a kick out of people thinking its odd that she and I go with out being accompanied by a male.

Answer 8

I've been watching Nascar for 12 years off and on. I got turned on to it by my uncle. He took me to a race in Talladega when I was 13. At the time I didn't even know 1 drivers name. It was just a weekend away from my parents with my cool uncle. After seeing those cars and hearing them screaming around that track how could you not be interested.

Answer 9

A trip to Darlington, SC on Labor Day weekend in 1976. I went with some other guys and was hooked by the speed and I loved to watch David Pearson drive the Wood Brothers #21 Mercury.

Answer 10

For me it goes back to when I was 3 or 4 years old. I would see my dad watching the races and he taught me to dislike Dale Earnhardt with a passion. But he also taught me to cheer for manufacturers rather than drivers. I started watching races on my own in August 1996 when I was 10. I originally said Bill Elliott was my favorite driver, but as long as Ford beat Chevy all was well.

Now that Bill Elliott barely races and NASCAR has eliminated all meaningful differences between one brand and the next... well you can see why I'm so bored with NASCAR.