America is NASCAR

NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing), sanctioning body for stock-car racing in North America, founded in 1948 in Daytona Beach, Fla., and responsible for making stock-car racing a widely popular sport in the United States by the turn of the 21st century.

Integral to NASCAR’s founding in the late 1940s was Bill France, an auto mechanic and sometime race-car driver. France had organized stock-car races in Florida throughout the 1930s and ’40s, and, after several unsuccessful attempts to create a series of races that would determine a national champion, in 1947 he created the National Championship Stock Car Circuit (NCSCC), a yearlong series of 40 races held across the southeastern United States. 

France was responsible for establishing and enforcing the technical regulations that governed the cars; creating a scoring system that would award drivers points used to determine a series champion; organizing and promoting each race; and awarding cash prizes to the winners of races and to the series champion. These would become NASCAR’s primary tasks as a sanctioning body.

Although the NCSCC was successful, France had greater ambitions. He convened a series of meetings in December 1947 in Daytona Beach attended by racetrack owners and race-car owners and drivers and intended to establish a still-larger stock-car-racing series. What emerged from those meetings was NASCAR, which replaced the NCSCC. France was its first president. The first race sanctioned by NASCAR was held on Jan. 4, 1948, at Pompano Beach, Fla. In February of that year NASCAR was incorporated, with France the primary stockholder.

In 1949 NASCAR changed the rules governing the cars: whereas in 1948 “modifieds”—cars varying in age and in the mechanical modifications made to them for the purpose of racing—were allowed to compete, from June 1949 only late-model (recently manufactured) stock cars were permitted. Races that year were called Strictly Stock races, and Red Byron became the series champion.

France changed the name of the series to Grand National in 1950, a name used until 1971, when the tobacco company R.J. Reynolds bought sponsorship rights to the series and renamed it the Winston Cup Series (it was also known as the Cup Series or NASCAR Cup Series). By then, stock cars had become purpose-built race cars; NASCAR’s rules required cars to resemble their stock counterparts in their dimensions and appearance, but car owners, drivers, and mechanics increasingly exploited those rules in their attempts to gain a competitive advantage. NASCAR was also responsible for mandating safety equipment in cars that, by 1970, had reached over 200 miles (320 km) per hour in nonrace conditions.      READ MORE...