NASCAR = Yawn
(Come on, send the hate mail)

By Jeffrey R. DeRego

What is this whole New Hampshire NASCAR obsession thing? Seems everywhere I go there is a bumper sticker, tee-shirt, or flag proclaiming the name, color or number of a professional race driver. Now, I am not culturally retarded or anything, but how is it that these guys are athletes?

I commute for an hour a day in my little blue Escort. Shouldn't I have graced the cover of "Car and Driver" by now? Shouldn't I have corporate sponsorship, or an endorsement deal? I mean, really, hasn't anyone noticed how well I merge?

I come from a family of car people. My uncles, Maurice and Raymond, are both professional mechanics. Maurice was even a pro race driver on the SCCA circuit. So, you'd think this kind of stuff was in my blood. But no, I grew up with a dad that never once changed the oil in any of his cars. He justified this with the tale of the "sealed engine design," which, in retrospect should have been called the "seized engine design," because that is exactly what happened to all of them. My dad drove a '68 Buick Wildcat that he bought for $120 from the back of a tow truck, and proceeded to fill with peanut shells (and eventually peanut shell mites) during his daily commute to Point Judith, Rhode Island.

Don't get me wrong, I am attracted to cars. I love the early design work of Harley Earl and the GM design team that gave us, among other things, the Firebird, and the Corvette. Back then the cars were more than 200 mph commercials for Winston, Skoal, and Tide. Stock cars were exactly what the name said, cars taken directly from production stock and forced to compete on a track. Automobile companies used these races to find design flaws, and work out new aerodynamic designs. Today it is all about the advertising. But that is a whole different column…

To me, watching NASCAR racing is like watching a traffic jam that moves at 200 miles per hour;
hundreds of cars poised only mere inches from one another with drivers strategically angling for a better position in the pack. Hell, I can see the amateur version of that on Interstate 93, or Route 101. Well…except the traffic jams on those roads don't move. The spirit is the same, though, only at the breakneck speed of one mile per hour. What's not to love?

I've begun to look at televised NASCAR the same way I look at televised bowling. That is, not at all. I hold no animosity towards bowling; see I can go bowling and have a hell of a good time. So, if the only connection any of us have to NASCAR is traffic jams, then what's the attraction?

Maybe it is the thrill of seeing a race. Well, not a race so much as a catastrophic accident, live. At least on I-93 I have the chance to see a fatal collision between a tractor-trailer and a Geo Metro, something NASCAR will never provide.

We have a NASCAR racetrack in Loudon, NH, but the thought of spending a day there fills me with fear. Sitting in the sun, all day, on a concrete bench and breathing a curious combination of burnt rubber smoke, and high-octane exhaust until I die of lung cancer or sun stroke is not for me. Nor is spending $456 for a damp hot dog and 10 ounces of flat beer? I'll pass…

If I need to see car crashes that badly, I can always park along any stretch of highway between here and Boston.

I don't need NASCAR. I have Interstate 93.