Racing with Bubba: An F1 Dummy's Intro to NASCAR

The Beginning

My inspiration for this article was the (not recommended) movie "Night at the Museum." There is a scene where the night watchman character, played by Ben Stiller, is telling a fictional Southern historical figure from the Civil War that he must stop fighting.

Stiller tells him the outcome of the conflict. "Slavery is wrong. Don't want to burst your bubble, but you guys get The Allman Brothers...(thinks hard )...and...(still thinking)... NASCAR. So just chill!"

It's just a weak gag in a weak movie, yet it seems to encapsulate a smartarse attitude. Racing cars is dumb, therefore watching cars racing is dumb, therefore it is a suitable thing for dumb Bubba in his Southern trailer.

I felt mocked and patronised, for I like my motor racing. As President Kennedy did not quite say, Ich bin einen Bubba.

So it was time to find out a bit more about NASCAR. And I did. And now I have to ask this; if Bubba's as dumb as I've been led to believe, how can he follow NASCAR?

Let me explain my rhetorical question.

I'm an F1 fan of the armchair variety, and have been for many years. F1 has many features I dislike, but it is very simple for a spectator to understand. There is only one way to score points, and that is to cross the finish line.

The winner gets 10 points, second place 8 points, and then it's 6,5,4,3,2,1. Below eighth place scores nothing. He who has scored most points at the end of the season is the World Champion. Ties are settled by who has won the most races.

And that, my chums, is what I call a straightforward sport.

Additionally, it is a straightforward matter to follow a particular driver in F1, for almost invariably each team fields the same two wheelmen for a complete season, and very often for many successive seasons.

The charming simplicity of F1, I have discovered, is in stark contrast to the complexity of the NASCAR world.

Which NASCAR?

There is a plethora of NASCAR series. There are regional series, there are truck series, there are modified series, a Canadian series, a Mexican series. It's enough to make a simple man's head spin.

F1 has a paucity of events, NASCAR sanctions well over 1,000 each year. But the question of which series becomes easy for me because I cannot get to any of the races, there being an inconvenient ocean in the way, and only the Sprint and Nationwide events are beamed down from the satellite to my humble home. It's not a trailer, by the way.

The Sprint and Nationwide series are run in parallel, on the same circuits and often on the same weekends, Nationwide on the Saturday and Sprint on the Sunday.

The Sprint series is named after its sponsor, a telecoms company. Similarly, the Nationwide series is named for an insurance company, and has nothing to do with the British bank of that name.

Of the two series, Sprint is the premier one, with slightly faster cars and significantly greater prize money. It's slightly like F1 & GP2, or like Premiership and First Division in UK soccer. There is some driver crossover, with Sprint drivers occasionally racing in Nationwide.

This practice is termed "buschwacking" (sic

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