Word: nascar
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...stock-car racing broke through about five years ago, when the Kid--Jeff Gordon, he of the Tom Cruise looks and the middle-class Indiana upbringing--started winning everything in sight and turning up on the Today show to hobnob with Katie and Matt. But consider this: by 1965, NASCAR was already the second most popular sport, by attendance, in the country. And it hadn't started its Northern offensive...
That would be mounted gradually. To an itinerary of Spartanburg, S.C.; Birmingham and Talladega, Ala.; and Hickory and Asheville, N.C.; NASCAR added, over time, Long Pond, Pa.; Sonoma, Calif.; Joliet, Ill.; Brooklyn, Mich.; Dover, Del.; and Loudon, N.H. The fans were attracted, in this mature iteration of NASCAR, by the thunder of the cars, which have been able to reach 190 m.p.h. for 40 years now, and also by a host of stars every bit as human and accessible as some of the early characters, if better scrubbed. Richard Petty won 200 races. David Pearson beat Petty head to head...
...ferocity behind the wheel. Ironhead's followers reveled in their hero's orneriness. Jeff Lancaster, owner of Lancaster's BBQ, a restaurant and car-racing shrine in Mooresville, N.C., explained it last week, the walls around him covered with souvenirs of racing giants: "He was the John Wayne of NASCAR. He was a kick-ass, take-names kinda guy. A guy's guy. Somebody that made things happen...
...dirt-track driver Stick Elliot. The word went out that Stick's mechanic had a gun and was looking for Ironhead. The grease monkey didn't find him, and the racer who would soon be known by a second sobriquet, the Intimidator, drove off to greater glory. Earnhardt was NASCAR's rookie of the year in 1979 and won the season-long title in 1980. Even critics of his aggressive tactics acknowledged that in Earnhardt, NASCAR had as talented a driver as it had ever seen...
...widow. He got into the business of racing, using the money from his on-track success, which would eventually burgeon to an all-time record $41.6 million, to start Dale Earnhardt Inc., an auto-racing company that would grow to employ 200 in Mooresville and field three cars on NASCAR's Winston Cup circuit...