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Sweet Home Carolina
"No matter how big or far flung NASCAR gets, it will always be rooted in the South," says Ferris. For now, NASCAR is most solidly rooted in North Carolina. Pretty much all major teams are headquartered here, making the Mooresville/Kannapolis/Charlotte area the Silicon Valley of stock car racing. The technology is here, the talent is here and the money is here.
Displaying either prescience or paranoia, NC governor Mike Easley sent a letter to state legislators on May 5 announcing that he will ask for $15 million to build a test track near Charlotte in a bid to keep the lucrative industry here. "We must invest now," Easley wrote in his letter, "to ensure that this industry keeps its home in North Carolina."
Taxpayers may wonder at the need to spend their money to support a multi-billion dollar industry. A test track won't be holding public events (and thus drawing out of town money) and will only create a handful of jobs. But it will save race teams a ton of money and precious man hours currently spent on sending race teams to Kentucky and other tracks for what is no longer a luxury, but a necessity if you want to compete -- testing. NASCAR dictates that teams can only test seven times a year on tracks that host Nextel Cup events, so teams can't just use Lowe's Motor Speedway over and over.
Luckily for local fans, there hasn't been any indication that teams were contemplating some kind of en masse relocation.
"There's no danger of that," says Smith of nascar.com. "If you're not in Charlotte, you're behind the curve already. If you leave Charlotte, you hurt."
Just ask the Wood Brothers team about "hurting" by not being in the Charlotte area. Based in Stuart, Va., for 53 years, the team decided this year to move to the Mooresville area. Their #21 car driven by Ricky Rudd has struggled for years, and the team is confident that the move will make them more competitive.
"That's a glaring, tell-tale sign of how important it is to be here," says Smith. "And NASCAR even moved their R&D facility here in 2003."
Hold On To Your Assets
Whether the rest of the South can hold on to its beloved NASCAR may depend on whether NASCAR will take into account the marketing potential of its Southern image.
In his book Fixin' to Git, Jim Wright proposes that the rest of the nation is actually becoming more like the South and is more welcoming of all things Southern, NASCAR included. He proposes the emergence of what he calls "the NASCAR paradox." Pointing to the demographic shift from urban to suburban areas, he ultimately decides that more of America is "countrified" than not and falls right in line with "NASCAR's carefully cultivated association with Americanism, community, Christian virtue, and family values. . . .The wild popularity of stock-car racing -- among Yankees and Southerners alike -- reveals a nation becoming more like the South, not the South becoming more like the rest of the nation."
"Southern institutions need to respect their roots because that's part of their appeal and NASCAR is no exception," says Ferris. "Just look at what happened when Coke changed its formula."
Most fans I spoke to at Talladega and Atlanta said they definitely think of NASCAR as Southern, and that it matters to them. Jeff Walker, a fan from San Francisco, put it this way: "Part of what makes NASCAR cool is that it's got so much character and attitude. My friends think I'm being ironic, but I really get a kick out of it. Maybe I'm connecting with my inner bad ass."
If this is the case, then NASCAR better put on the brakes and remember the lessons that every one of those kids Saved by the Bell had to learn time and time again: don't go ditching your old friends for the popular kids when you get a chance, and the only way to be cool is to be yourself. For NASCAR, that surely means being rough, rowdy and unashamedly Southern.
Can I get a "hell, yeah!"
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Calendar
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DoubleTree by Hilton South Charlotte Tyvola @ DoubleTree by Hilton South Charlotte Tyvola.
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The Versus Show @ CATCh
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Queen Charlotte Fair @ Route 29 Pavilion
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AllMachines
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AllMachines - Forklifts
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High-Tailin' It
Is NASCAR Getting Too Big for Its Southern Britches?
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Who Crapped in the Sand Box? 7
How greed spoiled Myrtle Beach
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'Lies, slander, hatred and jealousy': The rise and fall of former District 3 representative Warren Turner 3
