Alex+K's+Op-Ed+Article

= = __ //NASCAR?// I'd rather walk. __

media type="file" key="alexk-muckrakers-2012.mp3"

Of all the forms of motorsport, NASCAR has got to be the boring-est, most-painful-to-watch, lamest excuse for a race. Period. All you do is sit down in your floppy benches and watch as the cars go round and round…and round (and round). 500 grueling, repetitive laps, punishing the slightest error with a fifty ba-gillion car pile up, which in fact, is the only thing worth watching. The races, which usually take place in major Southern cities, attract thousands of beer chugging, beer-bellied, drunkards. Although the ever so common crashes make for a good race highlight session, the other 99% can go to hell.

I am a motorsport fanatic. My Super bowl is the 24 Hours of Le Mans and my Rose Bowl is the 24 Hours of Daytona, which I would like to strongly emphasize, is not a NASCAR event. I spend my weekends watching Velocity, a dedicated non-NASCAR automotive channel, and playing Forza Motorsport 4, a non-NASCAR Xbox game. The famed Speed Channel, although on occasion features cool programming, like the Car Show with Adam Corolla, more often than not features NASCAR. Hooray.

I mean every kind of race has its own unique attractiveness to it. Formula 1 are the fastest road cars and drivers around, Le Mans pits all the manufacturers and their drivers against each other and rally showcases supped up monsters sliding and kicking up dirt. NASCAR? Have fun watching near identical cars, just the badge on the hood and some decals differentiate them, circling a track for hours. No shifting gears. No threshold breaking. No right hand turns. Nothing. I don’t like anything about it. I don’t enjoy the sights, the people or the sounds. All the cars have the same basic V8s running at the same rev’s (which mean same sounds) which isn’t fun. At a local race here at Long Beach each individual car had a unique melody to it. You had the howl of the Ferraris, the ground shaking power from the Corvettes, the iconic flat-six Porsches and so on. I don’t even like the pit crews in NASCAR. Their drill guns remind me of a dentist’s electric drill.

I don’t even like the people to attend. Take this: Picture a redneck. He likes beer, red trucks, Confederate flags, the South, shotguns, more beer, country, explosives, and you guessed it, NASCAR. I guess it takes a simple mind like that to enjoy a simple sport like NASCAR. Top Gear, the famous English gear head show, which showcases every kind of car related material on the planet, like sofa cars and airport equipment races, refuses to recognize NASCAR. Back in the day when the oval tracks were dirt and veterans raced their hot rods, those were the days. Now I have definitely been a bit harsh on Rednecks and their beloved NASCAR. It is still motorsports and I respect it but you won’t find me at Talladega or the Brickyard anytime soon.