My visit to the NASCAR Hall of Fame (Charlotte, NC - JUN 29 2024)
Every year for a few years now, I try to do an Independence Day post where I walk around a few cemeteries and snap some cool photos. But this is an election year, and I'm concerned that I'm going to have to soft-block some political zealot high on their own farts that will leave intellectual gems in the comments like 'Drumpf IZ Hitler!' or 'down with left-cucks in 24!'. So instead, I'm going to share some pictures that I took at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, and you can leave all the unrelated jabbering political frivolity that you'd like in the comments section.
For the record, I'm not into NASCAR at all. I haven't watched a full single race in my lifetime, and I tend to associate it with rednecks driving in circles. Which, to my chagrin, I was dead wrong in my interpretation on. Well, except for the redneck part. There's a hell of a lot more to these beautiful cars than I thought. My visit to this specialized museum was a delicate mix of history, art and science lessons!
The first thing I learned is that although these cars look fully assembled from the outside, they have nearly all the standard parts taken out (the radio, the average driver wheel, the headlights, etc.) and the bodies are composed of a flat sheet of durable metal. These days the car panels, which are composite materials like plastic coated with fibreglass, are then painted over to make a colorful, and often very corporate piece of art that is ready to drive at breakneck speeds. This all makes the modified car as light and agile as possible on the speedway.
In the U.S. south, where I reside these days, stock car racing's roots took hold from prohibition. Stock car racing wasn't just about competition; it was about taking your very fast car and running moonshine and illegally imported booze to different regions around Appalachia. Getting away from highway patrol meant stripping your car of excessive weight and parts, allowing for maximum maneuverability around hairpin turns and extreme acceleration up and down steep hills… all while a 1000-pound barrel of booze was strapped down in the back seat.
This is a picture I snapped inside the Hall of Honor, and that man is Richard 'the King' Petty. As a non-NASCAR fan, his face is the face I most associate with NASCAR, as his signature moustache, glasses and hat stand out to me as a truly memorable and iconic driver. But it’s not just the driver that participates. In NASCAR, your team is composed of a chief, who spots opportunities from television monitors and signals the driver through radio to execute specific moves to win the race, all while managing the rest of the team.
The pit crew consists of mechanics, a jackman (runs around the car with a heavy jack to raise the automobile during a maintenance pit stop), a cut-off valve attendant for refuelling, and a driver attendant who helps the driver get in and out of the car. It doesn't just take an individual driver, but a full team to assist the driver in winning the race. Drivers have suffered concussions, bone fractures, severe burns, whiplash, traumatic bodily injuries and death. Talk about bleeding for your craft!
And now for some art! Pictured above is a full-scale clay model of a Next Gen Ford Mustang. These days, clay models of racing cars are developed from digital designs and used to capture approvals from companies to lay down a final design for a race-worthy automobile. Once you pack a V-8 engine into one of these babies and recreate it out of a steel tube frame, you've got a vehicle that can reach speeds above 200 miles per hour.
Here's my pops, Dave, who I took to this museum as a birthday present. He's a NASCAR freak, and this little excursion to the Hall of Fame actually made him cry for a beat as he recalled decades worth of memories of racers, historic moments, and images of historic back-to-back victories for drivers and their teams.
Every car has the potential to be a race car. It just takes some weight-loss surgery or a good initial design, some driver safety features, and a colorful skin to make the whole thing faster, more agile, and more appealing to the eye. I have to say I never expected to absorb so much from the NASCAR HoF. I was grateful for my visit and wanted to share a portion of what I learned to Tumblr as a fun little sidebar.
I hope you enjoyed this post. And rest assured, you will never see another NASCAR post on my page ever again… y'know, unless it’s a meme or something!
Happy 4th,
th3-0bjectivist (Luke)
[ADDENDUM (07/05/2024): Tumblr ryanthedemiboy pointed out to me in the comments that the third paragraph in this post probably needed some modifications regarding the actual description of the panels, which I originally and ignorantly described as an ‘outer metal hull’. While this might have been the case with older NASCAR vehicles, in modern times the panels are at best ‘metal-skinned’, if that, and manufactured from carbon fibre. Also, older NASCAR vehicles were painted and repainted, but ever since the early 2000’s these vehicles are simply wrapped in a vinyl skin. Thank you for your insight ryanthedemiboy, I will ‘stay in my lane’ so to speak in the future and give these topics, that are alien to me, the research they deserve before I post!]
