NASCAR Nation + National Politics

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Brake Fix’s History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.

Crew Chief Eric: Pole position. NASCAR Nation and National Politics by Mark Howell.

This presentation, part of an ongoing larger body of research, explores the long, complicated, and often controversial relationship between NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing, and the American political system. From NASCAR founder Big Bill France’s campaign support of then presidential candidate George Wallace, to former NASCAR Grand National driver Ty Scott’s arrest for allegedly attacking police officers during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, the road to Washington, D.

C. has often taken a detour, usually a hard right, through Daytona Beach. Part of this paper looks at NASCAR’s connection to various political candidates, both during campaigns and after votes have been counted. [00:01:00] And certified another section of this presentation examines the use of race cars as campaign promotional vehicles over the years.

This paper explores the very public and very strategic alliance between political candidates and NASCAR Nation. From Jimmy Carter welcoming Grand National Drivers to the White House, to Ronald Reagan sharing Kentucky Fried Chicken with Richard Petty, the relationship between stock car racing and politics presents itself as a calculated combination of regional identity and popular culture driven stereotypes.

Dr. Mark D. Howell has been involved with motorsports his entire life. He earned a BA in English in 1987 and an MA in American Studies in 1990 from Penn State, then earned a PhD in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University in 1995. His dissertation evolved into From Moonshine to Madison Avenue, a Cultural History of the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, which was published in 1997.

In 2014, Dr. Howell co edited with Dr. John Miller of Longwood University, Motorsports and American Culture, from Demolition Derbies to NASCAR. Dr. Howell’s full time job since August [00:02:00] of 1997 has been a professor of communications at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City. He spent two years before NMC as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University.

Mark has also taught advanced courses for Tiffin University, Oakland University, Ferris State University, and Davenport University.

Dr. Mark D. Howell: There are two events that prompted today’s presentation. The first was back in October of 2021, when Brandon Brown, a young NASCAR XFINITY Series driver, won his first career race at Talladega Super Speedway in Alabama.

NBC’s Kelly Stavast was interviewing Brown track side on live television when nearby fans began a very loud, very profane chant about President Joe Biden. Stavast trying to shift the narrative. Told viewers the crowd was actually [00:03:00] shouting, Let’s go Brandon! In celebration of Brown’s inaugural career win.

Within days, all sorts of MAGA marketed Let’s go Brandon merchandise appeared. From shirts and decals to flags and yard signs. The derogatory slogan embarrassed both Brown and NASCAR executives, all of whom publicly distanced themselves from the explicit chant that spread quickly among Trump’s faithful followers.

The second was just this past June, when I learned that a friend of mine, a gentleman I’ve known for a long time, For almost 30 years, former NASCAR Cup Series driver, Ty Scott, Ty drove during the mid 1970s through the late 1970s for Walter Ballard, who sadly, Walter just passed away last weekend. But Ty was arrested for his involvement in the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.

Ty and [00:04:00] his son were both formally charged with assaulting and injuring police officers. These events prompted me to explore the relationship between NASCAR nation and national politics. We can spend the rest of our lives debating current events or talking about political science, but my focus here is on the role that NASCAR has played in the evolution of nationally recognized political ideologies.

American society can be a bit guarded when it comes to the federal government. People are sometimes suspicious of big, in quotation marks, government oversight and excessive taxation, an attitude that’s commonly linked to a politically conservative mindset as one might see within the Republican Party, let’s say.

It’s very much a hands off or laissez faire philosophy. An attitude driven by America’s sociocultural history, the unique relationship between American politics and motorsports originates from this traditional value we commonly [00:05:00] call rugged individualism or self reliance. As I suggested in my first book, the origins of stock car racing were closely tied to the heavily agrarian economies of the American mid Atlantic and Southeast.

Scots Irish immigrants brought to America their practice of fermenting and distilling grass crops like barley, rye, and corn into forms that were easier to preserve, transport, and store. These alcoholic byproducts could also be used to barter for goods and services. When the newly formed federal government tried levying taxes on these fruits of rural frontier labor, the settlers who tended the land, grew the crops, and distilled the liquor as a form of both currency and curative asserted their autonomy and stood in defiance of federal interference.

This revenue stream led to the passage of a national whiskey tax in 1791. The hard working, predominantly Scots [00:06:00] Irish frontiersmen intimidated federal tax collectors until 1794, when newly elected President George Washington sent 13, 000 federal and state militia. The militia came from Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey, and Maryland.

He sent them to western Pennsylvania, the region near what is now Pittsburgh, around the Alleghenies. The idea was to enforce the new tax and bring the disgruntled farmers into line. Washington ordered commissioners to begin negotiations with the the frontiersman while at the same time leading the aforementioned troops toward possible confrontation.

The Whiskey Rebellion played a role in the ongoing formation of political parties in the United States, but it also reflected the qualities of rugged individualism or self reliance that eventually brought us to the high banked asphalt at Daytona International Speedway. It was hardscrabble subsistence farming that [00:07:00] sustained the frontier tradition of fermenting and distilling grass crops.

Throughout Appalachia, the primary crop turned into liquid currency was corn. With corn mash, sugar, water, a heat source, and the proper equipment, people throughout the American South could provide for their communities by, once again, standing in defiance, of federal legislation. The cottage industries of moonshining and bootlegging grew from the public’s disdain for the 18th Amendment, which was intended to control the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol, with an emphasis on federal taxation.

This disdain sustained the rebellious attitudes and activities that eventually caught the attention of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Now, from a folkloristic and romanticized perspective, bootleggers with heavy feet and modified sedans brought a much more individualistic [00:08:00] quality to the sport of stock car racing.

NASCAR founder William Getty, Big Bill, France, recognized the public’s fascination with these outlaw personalities. Many of NASCAR’s earliest stars earned money by bootlegging moonshine. Drivers like Junior Johnson, the last American hero according to Tom Wolfe’s 1965 Esquire article, who did jail time in Chillicothe, Ohio in 1956 after getting arrested at his family’s still in North Carolina.

This outlaw mythos has been part of NASCAR ever since. Race teams operate as independent contractors. As such, teams have a somewhat antagonistic relationship with their sanctioning bodies, disagreements between racers and those who govern the series in which they compete. Sometimes this antagonism is driven by dedicated race fans who embody the perceived values of the sport, and sometimes the antagonism is more [00:09:00] playful.

Like when Roger Penske or Dan Gurney were nominated as presidential candidates who’d support motor racing interests. But if we look at the history of motorsports, we see connections linking racers to real life political structures and or ideologies dating back to the earliest days of competition. In 1909, Barney Oldfield told the media that his national racer, nicknamed Old Glory, would make sure that, and this is a direct quote, the foreigners that crosses my path with Old Glory as my colors is going to find a Boston tea party brewing before the dust and smoke clears away.

In 1910, Barney Oldfield received a telegram from Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, praising America’s speed king for setting a land speed record in the Blitzenbends at Ormond Beach in Florida. In the late 1930s, the Auto Union Silver Arrow Racing Program, also the [00:10:00] Mercedes Racing Program, was supported both emotionally and financially by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party as a symbol of the movement’s technological and competitive strength.

Resulting in cars that dominated most of the races in which they ran, as we have heard in a couple of programs and presentations over the years. In 1972, Texan Lloyd Ruby drove the Silent Majority Special at Indianapolis in honor of that emerging sociopolitical philosophy and the Americans who believed in its emphasis on traditional, more conservative values.

In 2001, American values were emblazoned across NASCAR following 9 11, with cars carrying paint schemes and language in response to the event. In 2013, Texas Motor Speedway hosted the NRA 500 NASCAR Cup Series event, with the full support of Republican Governor Greg Abbott. And in 2015, [00:11:00] Republican interests increased voter turnout in Florida with the Rev the Vote Sponsorship Program of teams in both the Xfinity and the Cup Series.

Now motorsports are at the mercy of their respective collective economies. NASCAR Nation has been affected by the cost of competition for race teams and by the cost of consumption for race fans. In NASCAR Nation, as we often say in the study of popular culture, you pay for the privilege of taking part in the event.

Big Bell France understood this all too well. He knew that stock car racing was a viable way to grab people’s attention, and he knew that politicians would most likely want to get their names and causes in front of an audience. In 1972, France used his influence to win the state of Florida for presidential candidate George Wallace.

France helped guide Wallace’s campaign because [00:12:00] Wallace, as governor of Alabama, allowed for the construction of the Alabama International Motor Speedway in 1968. Wallace’s campaign ended, however, after he was paralyzed in 1972 in an assassination attempt. That said, NASCAR slowly grew into a viable political force, its influence wielded by the France family and extending to the White House.

NASCAR was a conduit for capitalizing on and exploiting the sociocultural attitudes and interests of its fan base. During the oil embargo of 1974, NASCAR came to the aid of President Richard Nixon and shortened the distance of that year’s Daytona 500 and select other races by 50 miles. To the federal government’s surprise, NASCAR wound up consuming 30 percent less fuel in 1974 than it did in 1973, and the restrictions were summarily dropped in [00:13:00] 1975.

In gratitude, President Nixon held a gathering at the White House to commemorate race teams for their achievement and for their civic duty. Junior Johnson’s official pardon by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 reflected the long and ideological relationship between NASCAR Nation and national politics.

As a sport with significant corporate ties, NASCAR promotes consumerism, and as a characteristically American sport with a discernibly Caucasian, Christian, family oriented, working class audience, NASCAR became a safe haven for conservative causes. In 1984, Reagan flew to Daytona International Speedway to watch the Firecracker 400 on July 4th.

It turned out to be the day that Richard Petty won his 200th career NASCAR Cup Series race. To honor Petty’s accomplishment, the president sat down with NASCAR teams to enjoy a picnic of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pepsi Cola, [00:14:00] both companies being loyal NASCAR sponsors. The day resulted in some of the most recognized photographs in auto racing history, not entirely because of Petty’s milestone victory.

In fact, one of the most famous photographs is the one of Petty running down the backstretch at Daytona while Air Force One is coming in for a landing at the nearby airport, and it’s a picture that became sort of famous and kind of synonymous of this connection between politics and NASCAR. Richard Petty is NASCAR’s most famous or most recognized Republican.

His family’s roots in racing go back to the bootlegging days when his father, Lee, hauled Moonshine in North Carolina. Despite his political leanings, Richard Petty was a founding member of the Professional Drivers Association that boycotted the inaugural NASCAR Grand National Race at Talladega because of safety concerns.

Richard also won the 1979 Daytona 500 that, number one, put NASCAR on the [00:15:00] national radar, and number two, leveled financial penalties on Cale Yarborough and the Allison brothers for their televised post race fight. As Bobby Allison once told me, the punishment that cost his family income ended up earning tens of millions of dollars.

For NASCAR, because NASCAR used a lot of that footage in promotional materials. Such hypocrisy puts NASCAR in an uncomfortable position. Every event on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is televised, and such coverage provides extensive optics for the enterprises that put their names on cars each week.

Such optics can, unfortunately, rile the ideological emotions of NASCAR Nation. We saw this when NASCAR decided to ban the confederate flag in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement a few years ago. We also saw it as well in the backlash from fans and from Jimmy Spencer, who disagreed with the [00:16:00] inclusion of Toyota as a NASCAR approved manufacturer.

These same optics can celebrate the ideals promoted by NASCAR itself, such as the customary pre race flyovers featuring military aircraft. If a politician wants to align themselves with the estimated 75 million citizens, quote unquote, of NASCAR Nation, all they have to do is find a place to fit in.

Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was a friend of stock car racing. As president in 1978, Carter invited NASCAR stars and cars to the White House, despite him holding a Mideast Peace Summit at Camp David when NASCAR came calling. That didn’t matter because it was First Lady Rosalyn Carter who took charge and made Gail Yarborough and David Pearson and Benny Parsons and car owner Bud Moore, among others, feel at home.

Democratic politicians like Jimmy Carter recognized the influence of NASCAR, but responses from [00:17:00] fans have been a blend of apathy and anger. When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, he was booed. By fans at Darlington Speedway in South Carolina. Despite this, several less vocal attendees, including NASCAR team members and drivers, according to South Carolina news writer Kathleen Decker, believe that Clinton would indeed make a good president.

In 2011, then First Lady Michelle Obama and Second Lady Jill Biden attended the NASCAR season finale at Homestead Miami Speedway in recognition of veterans families. They too were enthusiastically booed. A writer from Great Britain posited that NASCAR fans perhaps were threatened by intelligent, independent women.

Perhaps that was true. NASCAR Nation was somewhat indifferent and almost critical when Janet Guthrie, an aerospace engineer and experienced SCCA [00:18:00] competitor, tried to qualify for the 1976 World 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Even though Sarah Christian and Louise Smith, drove in NASCAR events during the 1940s and 1950s.

In 2004, I did a radio show with NASCAR executive Herb Branham and Sears Point Raceway president at the time, Steve Page, regarding this phenomenon called NASCAR dads, the term coined by political pollster Celinda Lake in response to swing voting soccer moms who were part of our popular culture at the time.

President George W. Bush was campaigning for re election and looking to connect with voters. Of the two major sporting events he could attend that February, either the Super Bowl or the Daytona 500, he opted for Daytona. His decision was politically motivated. Fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. had financial support from the National Guard, and the United States was at war in the Middle East.

[00:19:00] Public radio listeners in the Pacific Northwest openly criticized the NASCAR National Guard relationship, yet no one mentioned President Bush’s very visible campaign visit to the Daytona 500. And Jimmy Carter was not the only Democratic president to host NASCAR at the White House. Barack Obama had Cup Series champions Jimmy Johnson, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, and Kyle Busch to Washington during his time in office.

And visits to the White House during that time included drivers like Clint Boyer, Denny Hamlin, and four time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon. At a rally in Georgia in 2016, then NASCAR CEO Brian France enthusiastically endorsed GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who stood next to drivers Mark Martin, Ryan Newman, Bill Elliott, and Bill’s son, Chase.

Each driver made a brief, rather generic stump [00:20:00] speech, and it was widely speculated throughout the racing community that the drivers were actually ordered by NASCAR executives to make an appearance. It was clear to the Republican Party that Donald Trump’s road to the White House went straight through NASCAR Nation.

Teams signed deals to promote Trump on cars in all three of the Turing Series. In return, President Trump welcomed NASCAR champions to Washington in what were now very customary media events and photo opportunities. And those opportunities aren’t just for racers. We see this all the time with Super Bowl champions, college sports champions, the World Series.

I mean, the Los Angeles Dodgers will probably go to the White House at some point here. So that idea has become part of our national tradition. When the seemingly more culturally inclusive NASCAR that banned Confederate flags publicly supported the cause of Cup Series driver Bubba Wallace, who openly championed the Black Lives Matter movement, [00:21:00] then President Donald Trump criticized the sanctioning body for giving in to liberal pressure, for going woke, as he put it, and for blatantly insulting the stereotyped good ol boy audience.

Such political prejudice is curious when you examine the statistical realities of NASCAR’s quite diverse fan based demographics. NASCAR fans typically skew younger in age. The majority are male, as we would most likely predict, but 44 percent live in urban environments. Half have gone to college, at least for some time.

The average income is 1, 000. Pretty healthy 72, 000 and notice that the fastest growing demographics are African Americans and Hispanics. So the idea of NASCAR being that good old boy sport that is changing as our culture changes. More importantly, NASCAR Nation is revered for fan loyalty to sponsors. As we know, the sport consistently [00:22:00] ranks number one among all other professional sports.

In 2020, Donald Trump became the second sitting president in history to attend the Daytona 500, and this past May, he attended the World 600 Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway as the guest of car owner Richard Childress. Who then hosted a political rally for Trump in the Charlotte area. Trump’s running mate, J.

D. Vance, attended the Cup Series event at the Charlotte Roval. He was a special guest at the driver’s meeting. He got to spend time with Richard and Kyle Petty, and he left nine laps into the post season elimination race. NASCAR has wrestled with sociopolitical ideologies throughout its 76 year history.

The days of Johnny Reb at Darlington, South Carolina eventually gave way to an open expression of national identity. Today’s NASCAR is now [00:23:00] currently facing a federal antitrust lawsuit brought on by a Cup Series team owner who is also one of the most famous and beloved African American athletes of all time.

For more information visit www. fema. gov This is the liminal space NASCAR occupies in 2024, a space where the sport’s current fan base reflects a growing and changing diverse and inclusive society, while the sport itself reflects on its sociocultural heritage and tries to balance its relationship to national politics with the evolving opinions and attitudes of its fans.

And with that, I thank you for your time and your attention.

Kip Zeiter: Mark is always very interesting and obviously very appropriate. Are there any Democrats that drive a NASCAR?

Dr. Mark D. Howell: Not that I have seen or come across. I’m sure there are people, and I guess that there are folks who have liberal sensibilities, but for them to come out [00:24:00] publicly and to admit that, I think in some cases might be not career suicide, but at least career possibly damaging.

And again, it has to do with that. Who are you as the individual? Are you part of this team and what they espouse? Or do you stand out and stand out for yourself? I’m guessing probably Bubba Wallace, the most liberal of the drivers and whether some of the guys in his posse. I mean, you’ve got Ryan Blaney and some of the younger drivers there, Chase Elliott.

I don’t know where they would skew. And that goes back to the idea of the rally in Georgia. Bill Elliott and Chase were there because they’re state superstars. But I think there was some question as to just how devoted Chase was to the cause. If you look at photographs of him speaking at that event, he looks like he’d rather be getting a root canal.

So, but I’m not sure I can’t say for sure.

H. Donald Capps: How much more exploration do you think we should be taking in this ideological? We tend to be focused on, you know, Paul Bach has done with fascism, Uyghur has done with the National Socialists [00:25:00] in Germany. When I first saw this topic, it was like, how much has there really been done on this?

This has seemed like a very unique approach you’re taking.

Dr. Mark D. Howell: Just from the American standpoint, this idea of self reliance, those of us who teach literature, we kind of lump that into Ralph Waldo Emerson and all of his addresses about self reliance. But, you know, you can go back to de Tocqueville and go back to those very early days of the new country, the emerging country of the United States, and you see that idea.

One of the things de Tocqueville wrote about Was seeing this independent spirit. Americans didn’t have to answer to a king. They didn’t have to answer really to anybody. And that’s kind of where that thread became part of our collective fabric. I think there’s really not a lot that’s been done looking at this connection.

There’s more work to be done, certainly.

Don Capps (2): With the push for electric cars in motorsports, um, I know the NHRA has attempted it. I believe they’ve tested some out in [00:26:00] NASCAR, but I think that’s another issue that could clearly divide the country because one side is really pushing it with a close deadline, and the other side is more relaxed.

Going with the person’s choice. So how do you feel that will come down in the future?

Dr. Mark D. Howell: That’s a good observation to make because the next gen car, which is the direct descendant of the car of tomorrow, the next gen car has been designed to contain regenerative Equipment, the idea that they could make those cars hybrids very easily.

They have the room under the hood and around the chassis to put that regenerative equipment. NASCAR tested an electric vehicle out at Chicago during the summer. Again, it was all about optics. It was getting that particular car in front of an urban, probably a little more liberal audience. I think the fan feedback was pretty exciting, but that’s going to be a direct sort of assault.

To those traditional sensibilities of the internal combustion motor, fossil [00:27:00] fuels, you know, the roots of what made automobiling automobiling, even though electric cars, as we know, go back to the turn of the 20th century, the electric cars were on the streets back in the early 1900s. But I think it’s going to create a real divide within NASCAR nation because you’re going to have the younger audience.

That’s leaning toward that more environmentally conscious idea. NASCAR went that way. NASCAR has a very active green sort of environmentally conscious aspect to it. They encourage recycling of oil. They encourage recycling of products, plant trees at all the different venues around the country. NASCAR is trying to lean in that more environmentally conscious direction.

But again, you’re going to get that pushback from that traditional, this is the way NASCAR has been don’t change it. And I think we’re already starting to see rumbles of that with the next gen car. When people start complaining about how many lug nuts are on a wheel, that tells you that there’s a difference of opinion out [00:28:00] there that’s just bubbling beneath the surface.

Executive Producer Tania: Just to build on that, I think there’s a safety concern that still needs to be addressed. If you went full EV, the battery situation, you have the massive, you know, wreck, and you have five cars piling up and they all become an inferno blaze, that’s a serious risk to the drivers, and a lot of tracks aren’t built for that.

Equipped to support how to extinguish an EV fire. We have Formula E, so obviously they’re doing something. I don’t know enough about what’s going on in that realm, and how they address incidents and crashes. I think something like Formula Series tends to wreck a little less spectacularly than NASCAR does, so I don’t know if we’re there yet to go full EV.

Maybe there is that middle ground of hybrid where you, you have both and you have less risk to the drivers, to the track, to the vehicles themselves.

Dr. Mark D. Howell: Yeah, just the idea of how to deal with an accident with an EV. Rescue crews wouldn’t be able to necessarily use the jaws of life because there have been cases where the jaws of life can actually risks of electrocution.

Emergency crews have to learn [00:29:00] specifically how to deal with EV incidents. And, I hate to say it, from the optics perspective Two or three EVs colliding at Talladega will not have the same kind of, harden the language here, explosive effect of cars that are running internal combustion gasoline powered motors.

We see all those photographs of the cars that are on fire and sliding down the wall and down the banking. That’s not going to be as readily visible with an EV. There are so many different factors playing into that. But, The culture is going that way. It’s something that NASCAR is going to have to confront here.

Seriously, very soon.

Kip Zeiter: I just like the sound of 40 V8 motors going around Talladega. I don’t think I could get used to EVs going around Talladega. It just wouldn’t sound the same.

Dr. Mark D. Howell: In an interview with Bloomberg. back over the summer and the writer was talking about how Dodge was ceasing manufacture of gasoline powered internal combustion muscle cars, chargers, and some of their sort of [00:30:00] higher end products.

And this idea that I guess you can actually flip a switch in the car and make it sound like an internal combustion motor so that if you really miss the sound of big iron under the hood, burning gasoline, you can essentially Tweak the sound of the car so that it copies that particular kind of resonance as opposed to just this kind of whoosh going by you on the highway

Ben Huntley: world.

Rally Cross went in that direction. They switched to full EV back in 22, 21, and the pushback from the fans were the racing’s. Very exciting, but it doesn’t. Sound as exciting anymore and also if they have a crash they do this in endurance racing as well There’ll be a red light will flash on and that will say something is damaged in the electrics It is now dangerous.

This car must stop immediately But based on what you were saying about cultures going EV way and so on and so forth Would you argue that NASCAR? Pushes society forward, or does it more react to what’s going on?

Dr. Mark D. Howell: There’s that push and pull of tradition. [00:31:00] You get those fans who don’t want anything to change.

They want the NASCAR of 1960, 1970 to be the NASCAR of 2025. And that’s just not going to be the case. And what some fans tend to forget is that those good old days weren’t really all that good. I mean, when you had races where the winning driver was one or two laps ahead of the second place driver, that’s what people are saying, you know, we want that kind of racing.

Well, I don’t think they do, you know, you’re not going to see finishes like that, where you have a car that’s a lap ahead of everybody else. On the evening news or on ESPN Sports Center, you’re going to see the photo finishes where you’ve got three cars crossing the line within literally inches of each other.

That’s where the excitement comes in, and that’s where a lot of new fans are becoming interested in the sport, but it’s that old traditional guard, that kind of old school NASCAR nation. They don’t want the new technology. They don’t want. The new [00:32:00] rules, people have been complaining about this playoff system and you got to win to get in and it’s all about points.

That wasn’t like it used to be. Yeah. Well, it used to be that Dale Earnhardt would win the national championship two weeks before the last race of the season. So I guess it becomes this idea of how do you define what good competition is? How do you define what excitement is? And that changes with our culture.

We become desensitized to certain things over time. Okay. But the EV question, it’s going to require fundamental change throughout the sport. It’s going to change the way teams operate. It’s going to change the way drivers think about their on track behavior. What do you do when you have to change a battery?

Like right now, I guess, Formula E, you have two cars, at least you used to, and you would just simply swap cars. Are they going to do that in NASCAR? It’s still uncharted territory. The sanctioning body, I think, is trying to sort of think in that direction, start moving in that direction. But again, there’s going to be some real criticism coming back from those [00:33:00] old school fans who they don’t want to see that big brother control mechanism coming in, even though that’s what NASCAR has been since 1948.

Bill France was a benevolent dictator. That’s the way he operated. It was his show. So those two attitudes probably aren’t going to play well together over time.

Kip Zeiter: Mark, that was terrific as always. Thank you so much.

Dr. Mark D. Howell: Thank you, Ken. Thank you, everyone.

Crew Chief Eric: This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center.

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Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction and Sponsors
• 00:21 NASCAR and Politics: An Overview
• 01:27 Historical Political Connections
• 02:20 Recent Events and Controversies
• 04:11 NASCAR’s Cultural and Political Influence
• 05:03 Origins of NASCAR and Political Ideologies
• 09:09 NASCAR’s Evolution and Political Ties
• 16:04 Modern Political Engagements
• 21:12 NASCAR’s Demographics and Future Challenges
• 25:51 Electric Vehicles and NASCAR’s Future
• 33:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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