Word: carli
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...grumbling among drivers. "These are the best of times and the worst of times," says Darrell Waltrip, a former champion who's hanging on at age 52 because the popularity and the money make it too hard to leave. "But it used to be just you and the race car. Now it's too big a business, and everybody wants a bigger piece of your time." In the old days, says Waltrip, "Richard Petty used to be able to win a race and sit up on the wall for an hour, sign all the autographs and go home...
Accessibility has always been part of the marketing plan, and you can begin to see the simple genius of it. These are souped-up replicas of real Pontiacs, Fords and Chevys--not open-wheel, Indy-type cars--and nearly everyone in America has a car. Nearly everyone has driven too fast too. At a NASCAR race, you can meet someone who gets paid stupid money to drive too fast. And chances are, he won't cry about his multimillion-dollar contract or go on strike, both of which have turned off fans of other sports. If a NASCAR driver doesn...
...race day in Bristol, 120,000 fans walk into the stadium wearing roughly half a million racing-related logos. The Winston people are giving away cigarettes. The cars are burning fossil fuel. The noise is obscene. There's a Remington firearms car, a Winston No Bull car, a Skoal car. The smells of raw horsepower, burned rubber and expectorated snuff are cooked by a wicked...
Unfortunately, I still don't know the first thing about racing. What's the driver got to do with it, for one thing? Isn't it the car that wins? Ray Evernham, Gordon's crew chief, helps me out a little. Every track is different, so the preparation of the car, and the strategy, changes from week to week. During a race, he and Gordon talk by radio. A half-pound of air pressure in one tire, added or subtracted during a pit stop, can tighten handling and make the difference between winning and losing...
...Jeff has a good car and a good crew, which is a big part of his success," Evernham says. "But he also has something extra, like Michael Jordan and Mickey Mantle had. He has a different sense of time than you and I. He can slow the race down in his mind, see things coming around and react before the next guy." The key in a race, Gordon says, isn't to drop the hammer "but to tell yourself to be calm, be calm, be calm. And just have a lot of patience to let the race unfold...