Overview

In the past twenty years, big-time stock-car racing has become America’s fastest growing spectator sport. Winston Cup races draw larger audiences-at the tracks and on television-than any other sport, and drivers like Dale Jarrett, Jeff Gordon, and Mark Martin have become cultural icons whose endorsements command millions. What accounts for NASCAR’s surging popularity? For years a “closeted” NASCAR fan, Professor Jim Wright took advantage of a sabbatical in 1999 to attend stock-car races at seven of the Winston Cup’s legendary venues: Daytona, Indianapolis, Darlington, Charlotte, Richmond, Atlanta, and Talladega. The “Fixin’ to Git Road Tour” resulted in this book-not just a travelogue of Wright’s year at the races, but a fan’s valentine to the spectacle, the pageantry, and the subculture of Winston Cup racing. Wright busts the myth that NASCAR is a Southern sport and takes on critics who claim that there’s nothing to racing but “drive fast, turn left,” revealing the skill, mental acuity, and physical stamina required by drivers and their crews. Mostly, though, he captures the experience of loyal NASCAR fans like himself, describing the drama in the grandstands-and in the bars, restaurants, parking lots, juke joints, motels, and campgrounds where race fans congregate. He conveys the rich, erotic sensory overload-the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feel-of weekends at the Winston Cup race tracks.

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9780822329268

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Reviews

“This book’s personal impressions don’t take you behind the pit wall-they take you into the stands, where the average folks watch the race. Wright combines the interests of the academic and the common race fan for an uncommon vision of NASCAR.”-Scott Huler, author of A Little Bit Sideways: One Week Inside a NASCAR Winston Cup Race Team “You don’t have to be a racing fan to appreciate great sports writing, and even folks who don’t know Dale Earnhardt from Dale Evans will savor this professor’s account of his unlikely enthusiasm for NASCAR. But, if you are a fan, you’ll probably like this book even more. Wright dispels a number of myths and helps us to understand why stock-car racing has become America's most popular sport.”-John Shelton Reed, coauthor of 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the South

You don't have to be a racing fan to appreciate great sports writing, and even folks who don't know Dale Earnhardt from Dale Evans will savor this professor's account of his unlikely enthusiasm for NASCAR. But, if you are a fan, you'll probably like this book even more. Wright dispels a number of myths and helps us to understand why stock-car racing has become America's most popular sport. --John Shelton Reed, coauthor of 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the South

This book's personal impressions don't take you behind the pit wall-they take you into the stands, where the average folks watch the race. Wright combines the interests of the academic and the common race fan for an uncommon vision of NASCAR. -Scott Huler, author of A Little Bit Sideways: One Week Inside a NASCAR Winston Cup Race Team You don't have to be a racing fan to appreciate great sports writing, and even folks who don't know Dale Earnhardt from Dale Evans will savor this professor's account of his unlikely enthusiasm for NASCAR. But, if you are a fan, you'll probably like this book even more. Wright dispels a number of myths and helps us to understand why stock-car racing has become America's most popular sport. -John Shelton Reed, coauthor of 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the South

Author Information

Jim Wright grew up in Indiana watching his father race on quarter-mile dirt tracks in the 1950s. After spending a couple of decades establishing himself as an academic sociologist, he began regularly attending NASCAR races in the 1990s. A sociologist who has taught at Tulane University and currently teaches at the University of Central Florida, Wright has written seventeen books. He lives in Orlando.

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