Stock Car Racing Essay

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Stock car racing has evolved a great amount since 1920’s when racing first started. The cause of racing was because of the Prohibition. The 18th amendment banned the production and possession of alcohol. So people had to make their own liquor, called moonshine. In order to make money from liquor, part of the job was to deliver it to their customers, but with the law enforcements trying to obey the new law, Moonshiners had to make their runs at night. They also had to use vehicles that would blend in, and would not create too much attention, but those vehicles couldn’t out run the cops, so they decided to make some slight modifications to them. After moonshiners made these slight modifications, they were able to run 120 mph on a dirt road without using headlights. Soon after, Moonshiners started to race each other on the weekends.
Bill Francis Sr. is the founder and the first President of NASCAR, which was finally incorporated on February 21, 1948. AAA was sponsoring stock car races even before NASCAR was founded. Three division were ran, Modified, Roadster, and Strictly Stock. Strictly Stock was the elite series, but was put on hold due to manufacturers not being able to produce enough family sedans during World War II, while the Roadsters were quickly abandoned due to lack of fans. Today the top 3 series for NASCAR are Sprint Cup, Nationwide, and Camping World Truck Series.
As cars were able to go faster, safety became a concern to track officials. Helmets were designed to dissipate impact energy, and prevent damage to the drivers head. The first helmets looked like hard hats; later on they developed a chin strap. The first full face helmet was made by Bell, but wasn’t worn until the Indianapolis 500 in 1968. But NASCAR, didn’...

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...from caving in during a roll over crash. This ended up with some teams designing a whole roll cage to protect the driver in all areas and not just one. The whole point of having a roll cage is to keep the car stiff, so it all doesn’t collapse on the driver or squish them into a spot where they are unable to get out.
NASCAR introduced roof flaps in 1994. The purpose of the roof flap is to help keep the car down, when it spins out. Due to high speeds after a car spun out backwards the car was able to catch air underneath it, managing the car to fly through the air and flip over. Another piece on modern cars today is having a spoiler on the rear end. The spoiler helps keeps the air push down on the car for maximum down force. This helps the tires to stay on the ground for more traction to the track. But this does take out some of the speed the cars do possess.

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