Published: July 11, 2008 01:26 pm         

She’s all about NASCAR, unless she’s not

I’m writing a novel, and my main character is a NASCAR driver. I was going to have him start out as a drag racer because I knew a bit about drag racing from when I was young. Back then, you hopped in your car, drove over to Bunker Hill, got out on the track, waited for the lights to signal the start and floored it. When it was over, you got back in your car and on Monday morning, you drove it to work, parking in the factory parking lot.

Half the guys I knew raced cars (the other half played in bands) and worked on cars and spent significant chunks of their paychecks, that we wives thought could have gone to better purposes, to enhance their car’s performance, but for all of that, the cars were still stock. Faster than the average personal vehicle but still just cars that you drove everyday.

As I soon discovered when I began doing research, times have changed. Racing isn’t fun and games for the local boys any more, it’s big business. Big and complicated for a novice to grasp. It would be lots easier if my character were a jockey because I know much more about horse racing than auto racing. I suppose it is possible to have a daring, dashing hero who is 5 feet tall but I didn’t know if I was talented enough as a writer to turn a miniature Brad Pitt into a convincing object of feminine desire. So I stuck with NASCAR and a 6-foot guy.

Since I started the book, I’ve learned a lot about NASCAR. For instance, I know that the average car is 200.7 inches long, 72.5 inches wide and 51 inches tall. I know it will likely have a 358 cubic inch, single-carb V8 with plus or minus 775 horsepower at 9,000 rpm and 550 foot pounds of torque and weigh in at about 3,400 pounds (unless the standards have changed). Now ask me what any of that means, and I don’t have a clue. The dictionary definition of torque is “the moment of a system of forces tending to cause rotation.” Oh, well, of course, it makes perfect sense now!

I know that Featherlite is the official NASCAR coach company that customizes the luxurious motorhomes in which NASCAR drivers while away their downtime. I know the team travels with a semi that is a car-hauler/carrier of extra engines and other parts/lounge, combined.

I know the NASCAR schedule which dictates that competitive NASCAR drivers maintain a brutal pace criss-crossing the country from track to track from February (Daytona) through November (Miami-Homestead) and points across the country, not any kind of order that would make sense, such as east to west or north to south but hopping around willy-nilly, like the scheduler stayed a little too long at the bar.

I’ve read books about NASCAR including one wonderful one called “Sunday Money” by Jeff McGregor. If you’re the least bit interested in this subject, I highly recommend it. I’ve perused Web sites and checked out magazine and newspaper articles. I’ve watched Channel 59 and Speed TV.

But if I know quite a bit now, there’s more I don’t know and some of it is the most elementary stuff that none of the experts bother to tell you, assuming, I guess, that if you’re reading them, you probably already know it. (I haven’t yet found a book entitled, “NASCAR for Dummies.”) For instance, I want my hero to take a little boy who is dying of cancer for a ride in his car. But is there a passenger seat in a NASCAR racing car? I know drivers sit harnessed into a cockpit but what’s on the other side? Does equipment take up all the room in front? I have hunted high and low and even tried to peer into tiny pictures to try to figure it out but I still don’t have the answer. (If anyone out there does and would like to share, I’d be hugely grateful.)

One thing that I’ve heard over and over is that you can read about it and watch it on television but you will never really be gripped by the excitement of NASCAR unless you actually go to a race. Until you hear the thundering roar of the cars, until you see the fervent enthusiasm of the cross-section of America that are NASCAR fans, until you taste turkey legs and gravel dust, until you smell the odor of exhaust drifting up to the stands and most of all, until you give your heart to one of the drivers, you will never really know NASCAR.

So that’s my plan — to go to a race. Unless I turn my hero into a croquet player instead.

Vicki Williams is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. She can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com