The Race Is Over, and NASCAR Wins

Middle-aged men holding hands: That's what you'll find in the bar atop the Streamline Hotel, a seedy, old-Florida art-deco relic in Daytona Beach. Pastel pink and green, the four-story Streamline caters to Daytona's gay visitors, the latest survival plan for the 63-year-old hotel, which has been a youth hostel, a retirement home owned by an evangelist who claims to have ministered to Elvis Presley, and the birthplace of NASCAR. In the Streamline's Ebony Bar in 1947, one William H.G. France gathered a few dozen men for meetings that resulted in the formation of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.NASCAR fans on a pilgrimage sometimes stumble into the Streamline, but they don't stay long. They walk into the humid lobby, glance at a few fading black-and-white racing photos, see handbills stuck to the wall looking for "hot male dancers," and leave. All Big Bill France might recognize is the carpet on the second and third floors, which appears to date back to at least 1947.

But the Streamline Hotel is where NASCAR began. Where it'll end is anyone's guess. Nearly 60 years on, the NASCAR juggernaut shows no sign of slowing and has eclipsed every other form of racing in America--at least as a marketing machine. How did NASCAR do it?

Ten defining moments in NASCAR's history might explain. Let's start at the Streamline.

The sport's early, colorful history--excitement-addicted redneck kids fresh home from World War II, racing their moonshine-running Fords and Plymouths--has been documented and suitably embellished. But it was on this day that a sport became a business. The central figures at that meeting at the Streamline are all gone now, but the day's big idea has survived: Bill France, gas station owner, thought it was time to organize stock-car racing.

There was NASCAR racing in 1948, but historians generally consider the 150-mile race held June 19, 1949, to be the first genuine NASCAR event, run on a dirt track in North Carolina. A month later, race two was held on the Daytona beach course (literally, on the beach). There were eight headline races in 1949, 19 in 1950, and 41 in 1951. NASCAR was up and running.

NASCAR ran 51 races in 1958, but lacked the big signature event it needed to challenge the prominence of open-wheel cars, which had the Indianapolis 500. With the opening of the Daytona International Speedway and its 2.5-mile trioval, Bill France had his signature facility and his signature event.

Big tracks, though, bring big crashes. France tried Indy cars first and backed an attempt to top the world closed-course speed record of 177.038 mph, set in Europe. The attempt killed driver Marshall Teague. Three days later, at the first race--for Indy cars, not stock cars--driver George Amick, on the pole at almost 177 mph, was killed. Indy cars never again raced at Daytona. When the first Daytona 500 ran a week later, 59 cars raced. Lee Petty won. His 21-year-old son Richard finished 54th.

What NASCAR learned: Big tracks, big crowds, big money.

Through the 1960s, NASCAR's momentum grew. Bigger being better, France built Alabama International Motor Speedway, subsequently known as Talladega, a 2.66-mile oval with even steeper banking than Daytona's. There were problems.Unions had been proposed among NASCAR drivers before, notably an attempt in 1961 led by colorful driver Curtis Turner and the Teamsters. It fizzled, and France banned Turner "for life." Which turned out to be four years. France said Turner had "paid the penalty" and invited him back.

In 1969, union talk returned. By the time the drivers got to Talladega, there had already been 43 races, some paying as little as $1000 to win. Driver Bobby Allison pointed out that the NASCAR insurance was a joke--a driver gets killed, "his wife gets $15,000, and that's it."

Enter the Professional Drivers Association. Richard Petty was president, and officers included Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, and David Pearson.

Talladega was the immediate concern. It would be the fastest track on the circuit, and the surface was very rough. Overworked tires were shredding at almost 200 mph. Firestone backed out, unwilling to be connected to a possible tragedy. Goodyear almost did, but France talked them into staying. The PDA met and voted to boycott. Petty told France on Saturday. The race was Sunday.

Words were exchanged. France said there would be a race, even if he had to pack the field with no-name drivers and leftover cars from Saturday's Grand Touring race. Which is exactly what he did and why a young driver named Richard Brickhouse won his first and only NASCAR race, thus becoming the answer to a trivia question.More words were exchanged. Petty asked a question that was on the minds of many: "How can Mr. France, president of NASCAR, look out for the welfare of NASCAR drivers, when he owns the track?"

But a few days later, for the Sandlapper 200 at Columbia, South Carolina, Petty was back. The next week, at the Old Dominion 500 in Martinsville, Virginia, they all were: David Pearson, Buddy Baker, Cale Yarborough, and Bobby Allison. And Richard Brickhouse, who finished 40th out of 40 cars.

Bill France broke the union and put Richard Petty, the most popular NASCAR driver ever, in his place. The PDA lingered, but was never a force.

What NASCAR learned: Big-name drivers need NASCAR more than NASCAR needs them.

For the 1970 season, NASCAR had signed a contract with ABC to broadcast nine of the 48 scheduled races. The network, having for years aired taped coverage on "The Wide World of Sports," was willing to devote 90 minutes to an edited version of a four-hour race, joining the race live near its conclusion.Suddenly NASCAR had to entertain viewers, not just the in-person crowd. At the Rebel 400 in Darlington, South Carolina, for instance, David Pearson won by three laps. The 42,000 fans in the stands had a good time. Viewers did not. Races couldn't be won by three laps.

In 1972, Big Bill France retired, replaced by his son, Bill France Jr. Before he left, he restructured NASCAR for the modern era: Little races on minor tracks were dumped. NASCAR ran 48 races in 1971, 31 in 1972. That year, more major sponsors arrived, following the lead of Andy Granatelli, who painted Richard Petty's car red and blue and stuck STP decals everywhere they would stick. STP was the template for the modern-era sponsor.

But it wasn't until 1979 that a network was willing to gamble that audiences would sit still for an entire race, flag to flag. CBS televised the 1979 Daytona 500, and viewers were rewarded with classic NASCAR theater. Petty won, breaking a 17-month losing streak. And at the end, there was the unforgettable fistfight in the infield between Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough, who'd battled for the lead until they crashed into each other on the last lap.

Ratings were huge. The telecast won an Emmy.

Bernie Ecclestone, guru of Formula One, once referred to the crowd at the racetrack as the "studio audience," suggesting that real money is made on TV.

What NASCAR learned: Bernie was right.

Gannett, a media conglomerate nobody had heard of, launched USA TODAY in an attempt to change that situation. As a national paper, its sports section had no home teams to cover. The newspaper promptly embraced auto racing in general, NASCAR in particular, as an opportunity to do what local daily papers wouldn't, or couldn't.Suddenly NASCAR had a national print outlet that was willing to devote page after page, week after week, to stock-car racing, with even the occasional front-page profile. Then, as now, coverage was mostly friendly and soft-hitting.

NASCAR sponsors and auto manufacturers began using USA TODAY as the chosen outlet for "congratulations" ads. Driver Jimmy Johnson pilots the Lowe's Home Improvement car to a dominating victory at Lowe's Motor Speedway (one of those NASCAR coincidences that drive conspiracy theorists over the edge), Lowe's congratulates Johnson, but mostly itself, with a big ad in USA TODAY. Going rate: $152,000 for a color page. Any wonder why USA TODAY and NASCAR have such a happy marriage?

What NASCAR learned: Free publicity is the best kind.

Twenty years of comparative complacency--the last big crisis being the strike at Talladega--scarcely prepared NASCAR for the lingering AIDS death of driver Tim Richmond, who got sick in 1986 and died in 1989.With seven wins and eight poles in 1986, how could anything be wrong with Tim Richmond? The handsome, fearless rich kid was NASCAR's most charismatic star, and the relationship between Richmond and old-school crew chief Harry Hyde was the first genuine example of old NASCAR meets new and the approximate basis for "Days of Thunder," minus, of course, Richmond's sad ending.

Sick for most of the 1987 season, he managed to run eight races, winning the first two. Such was his talent: An ill Tim Richmond was better than 39 healthy drivers. His last race was at Michigan on August 16. He was groggy and disoriented. Fellow drivers had seen enough. A week later, Richmond quit the Hendrick team, citing health reasons--a lingering cold.

Even then, no one was talking. Many thought his party-boy lifestyle had led to drug addiction, but loyal fans convinced themselves it wasn't that. When Richmond tried to race in 1988, NASCAR barred him from competing, citing a failed drug test. The drugs were revealed to be legal, over-the-counter medications, but in the minds of fans and sponsors, the damage was done. Richmond sued NASCAR, but it never went to court.

After Richmond died, and the cause of his death was revealed, NASCAR took heat. Safety crews wondered aloud why he was allowed to race in 1987, when insiders knew, or at least suspected, the truth. Suppose Richmond had been hurt and they had come in contact with his blood?

Worse, rumors surfaced about multiple women who claimed to have been infected with HIV by Richmond. One went public: Model, beauty queen, and actress LaGena Lookabill Greene said she was convinced Richmond knew he had AIDS when they had slept together. The idea of a NASCAR star knowingly spreading AIDS--true or not--led to some sleepless nights for NASCAR executives. But the stories died, and NASCAR was untouched.

What NASCAR learned: Spin control is your friend.

In 1991, relative newcomer Alan Kulwicki finished 13th in points, with one win. Who would've thought he could be the NASCAR champion in 1992?Nobody but Kulwicki, a focused loner who turned down rides with top teams to drive his own car, an underfunded Ford Thunderbird. The "Underbird," Kulwicki and his fans called it.

The 1992 season was the year when Richard Petty retired, football coach Joe Gibbs became a team owner, and Big Bill France died in his sleep at 82. But all that was overshadowed by Kulwicki, who won only two races--Bill Elliott and Davey Allison each won five--yet all three had a legitimate shot at the championship as they went into the last race of the season. At the end of the race, Kulwicki had 4078 points, Elliott 4068.

NASCAR was battling the perception that big multicar teams, like those owned by Richard Childress, Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush, Robert Yates, and Joe Gibbs, were the only ones that could win a championship. Kulwicki proved that wasn't true.

And then he was gone. Kulwicki died in a plane crash just five races into the 1993 season, en route to the Bristol race. Since then, no single-car team, no underdog, has come close to winning a championship. Nor will they. It costs a fortune to race NASCAR, and team owners have found strength in numbers, amortizing fixed costs over two, three, or four teams instead of one. And since NASCAR restricts the number of tests it allows each competitor, a three-car team can gather triple the developmental information a one-car team can.

A handful of one-car teams struggle to hang on, most affiliated with a major multicar team. But there'll never be another Kulwicki. If NASCAR's modern era began in 1972, the postmodern era began in 1993, when the longstanding perception that, with hard work, talent, and luck, the little guy could win, died with Alan Kulwicki.

What NASCAR learned: Nothing, apparently.

NASCAR loves competition, but only on its racetracks, not for its empire.And that empire is what, exactly? NASCAR is a private company, essentially owned by the France family, which is why Bill France Jr. and his brother Jim are each worth $1.2 billion. The International Speedway Corporation, a public company since 1996, owns the racetracks, the concessions business, and the radio network that covers their races. Public company or not, the Frances control ISC, located next door to NASCAR. A recent press release from ISC mentioned that the company "received NASCAR's approval for the realignment of several NASCAR Nextel Cup races within its portfolio beginning in 2005. "ISC "received NASCAR's approval?" Imagine that!Now, meet another billionaire, Bruton Smith, who runs Speedway Motorsports, Inc., in Charlotte, North Carolina. Smith is NASCAR's biggest supporter, its biggest critic, and certainly its best customer for races. SMI wants more races, in fact, for the tracks it owns.

Counting nonpoints events, there are 38 races on the 2005 NASCAR Nextel Cup schedule, at 22 tracks. ISC--or NASCAR, if you're a cynic--and Bruton Smith's SMI own all but four of those tracks.

It's always rankled Smith and the SMI management and stockholders that they must compete for races with tracks controlled by the sanctioning body. It's like the France family is McDonald's and Bruton Smith is Burger King and McDonald's owns every cow in the world. Yet it tries to convince Burger King that it has equal access to the beef.

There have been times when Bruton Smith intimated that maybe it would be nice to have his own herd of cows. Could there really be room for a NASCAR competitor? Might there someday be an alternative?

Any chance of that happening ended on July 26, 1999, when Penske Motorsports basically sold its tracks to ISC. Those tracks--California, Michigan, part of Homestead, and Rockingham--if combined with Bruton Smith's SMI tracks, conceivably might've been enough to support an all-new series, especially if Smith and Roger Penske joined forces. But that threat ended when Penske sold to ISC.

The media loves to compare NASCAR with other sports, but it just isn't appropriate. Actually, there is one game that NASCAR resembles--Monopoly.

What NASCAR learned: You scratch my backstretch, maybe I'll scratch yours.

Having paid its fair share of the new $2.4 billion NASCAR TV contract, the Fox Network was more than ready for its inaugural broadcast, the 2001 Daytona 500. Until the last turn of the last lap, things could not have been going much better--Michael Waltrip, loser in 463 straight races, was leading in a car owned by Dale Earnhardt. Second was Waltrip's teammate, Dale Earnhardt Jr. And just as a gleeful Darrell Waltrip, ex-NASCAR champ and newly minted TV broadcaster cheered his brother to his first win, Dale Earnhardt crashed into the wall and died.You saw Earnhardt's death lead the evening news, on the front page of your newspaper, on the cover of Time. NASCAR's biggest star--more than anyone else, the reason NASCAR's TV rights were worth $2.4 billion--was gone. Had NASCAR been a public company, you can imagine what would've happened to its stock price on Monday.

But the next week, NASCAR raced at Rockingham, then Las Vegas, then Atlanta, and while there was a black cloud over the whole season, no one--not Fox, not NBC, not the fans, not the sponsors--asked for their money back. A sport losing its number-one attraction is a challenge no one wants, but NASCAR had no choice but to face it. The fact that it survived, and thrived, is a testament to its strength and resiliency.

Analysts love to ask themselves whether or not NASCAR has "peaked," citing up-and-down TV ratings and occasional empty seats at races. So what if it has peaked? Has baseball peaked? Golf? Football? Basketball? If NASCAR never added one more fan or built one more seat at a track, it still would be huge and entirely unthreatened by any other form of racing. Photo caption:NASCAR is best known for popularizing high-banked oval racing. This is Daytona, one of the most steeply banked superspeedways on the sircuit, and Dale Earnhardt's last race.

What NASCAR learned: It can't replace Dale Earnhardt, but it didn't have to.

"When you have an efficient government," said President Harry S. Truman, "you have a dictatorship." Big Bill France ran NASCAR until 1972, when Bill France Jr. took over. And in September 2003, he turned over the reins to his son, Brian France, 41. Brian assumes control of what the Associated Press calls "the most popular sport in the United States, behind the NFL." He promptly instituted several major rules changes, spearheaded some schedule changes, and let it be known that, while NASCAR's history is important and all, this is the 21st century and this is the new NASCAR. An overriding goal is to build a track in view of the New York City skyline, which is probably much more important to Brian France than to the vast majority of NASCAR fans, but you see where this administration is going.

It's too early to pass judgment, but it's not too early to suggest that some longtime fans of NASCAR are turned off, particularly by the pro-wrestling nature of Brian's biggest initiative: making the last third of the season a 10-race playoff for the championship, fought by the top-10 drivers in points. The other 33 drivers sort of become field-fillers. Will it generate more excitement near the end of the season? Maybe. And "excitement" is paramount.

Brian France is smart, and he's been interning for the job all his life. We'll see how it all plays in Peoria.

What NASCAR learned: If you must choose, new fans are better than old fans.

• The entry of Toyota into the NASCAR Craftsman truck series this year will lead to its involvement in the Nextel Cup series, likely in 2007, or possibly 2006 if things go better than even Toyota expects. So far, Honda and Nissan have shown no interest in following Toyota, but that could change.• Expect the aforementioned New York City-area track to generate a lot of publicity once ground is broken, not because it's particularly important to anyone but NASCAR, sponsors, and the New York media, but that's enough. Determined to shake the bootlegger's-boy mud off its shoes once and for all, NASCAR steps up its search for respectability. • Look for NASCAR to work hard on diversity programs, as indicated by the recent hiring of Magic Johnson as a sort of goodwill ambassador. Even so, NASCAR has some questions to answer, such as: Why were there three women in the field for the very first race at Daytona in 1949 and none now? And if the new NASCAR is so forward-thinking and the old NASCAR was so backward, why is there no African-American driver in the Nextel Cup series, though there was in the 1960s, when Wendell Scott had 147 top-10 finishes, plus a win?• And, finally, expect a sponsor crisis. It takes about $12 million to fund a moderately competitive Nextel Cup team for a year, and companies willing to write that kind of check are growing scarce, especially since NASCAR and the racetracks themselves are actively battling their own competitors to land those sponsorship dollars. NASCAR insists that no one cares if a full field of 43 cars shows up at the track each week. We'll likely soon find out. Meanwhile, rooms at the Streamline Hotel are just $25 a night, not much more than they were in 1947. Some things don't change.--SCS