How To Enjoy Watching A NASCAR Race As A Normal Person
Preaching the good word of a misunderstood and under-appreciated sport. It really is fun to watch, even if you're normal.
I have often been asked by friends and loved ones:
“How can you watch that crap?”
What a good question! I’m so happy you’re interested. I have two answers:
The short answer is to go to a race. Nothing else compares. It’s life-changing.
The long answer is the rest of this article. Watching motorsports is not quite as intuitive as watching other sports. Enjoying a race usually requires more information than a single frame of a single lap on a television broadcast contains. Without knowledge of the rest of the racetrack, and the laps that came before the one you’re watching, a race lap on tv just looks like two cars moving somewhat near one another. Even worse; the perspective and distance can create the illusion that the car’s aren’t going that fast.
I believe a race broadcast needs to be “translated,” that there are certain inherent flaws in the television camera’s ability to capture the onslaught of visual information that 36 cars going in a circle over and over actually produce. So, I’ll translate a race for you, pointing out the individual laps and moves that make a race compelling, even if the TV crew misses it. For instruction’s sake, our example race will be an easy one to enjoy: last spring’s Kansas Speedway race. NASCAR journalist Jeff Gluck runs a weekly poll called “Was It A Good Race?” At 95.8% Yes, this race is the highest rated race of all time [since 2016.]
You can skip to the laps I specifically highlight in this piece, or you can watch the stellar racing on every lap of this race commercial free. However, since your consciousness hasn’t yet ascended to watching racing with only the platonic ideal of a Good Race in mind, you’ll need a rooting interest. Pick a driver. Sometimes my mother likes to text me her favorite paint schemes before a given race, and those picks have an uncanny habit of winning races. So go ahead, pick your favorite paint scheme, because the paint always dictates the winner.
Oh, you picked the #19 of Martin Truex Jr? Excellent choice, I agree. Truex is a former champion and future hall-of-famer. He’s in an elite Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, and Toyota dominates this track. He’s one of the cleanest drivers in the garage and, according to my girlfriend, Truex and Bubba Wallace are the only handsome drivers in all of racing (but she hasn’t seen Kyle Busch yum yum.) Plus, he’s retiring at the end of 2024, so maybe he’ll get a sign-off win in his final year. The race starts at 3PM, see you then.
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Oh, it’s 3PM, you’re early. Sorry, we have about 23 minutes before the drop of the green flag. Right now we’re on the pre-race prayer. I know. Toss that on mute and we can go over some stuff you’ll need to know.
The race is 400 miles, which usually takes about 3 hours. The drivers are racing for two things: the race win, and season-long points. Without getting into the byzantine playoff rules, the gist is that the top 16 drivers in season-long points after the 26th race (out of 36) qualify for the playoffs. Unless a guy below the top 16 wins in that time, in which case that guy bumps out 16th place. Win and you’re in, but scoring more points/wins gives you a higher seed when the playoffs start.** Points are given at the end of the race, 1 point for last place, 2 for second to last, 3 for 3rd to last, and so on.
The race has three “stages.” At the end of stage 1 (lap 80) and stage 2 (lap 165), there is a mandatory caution and season-long points are awarded to the top 10 finishers in each stage. 10 points for P1, 9 for P2, and so on. Stage 3 is the rest of the race. During those cautions, no passes can be made on the track, only on pit road among drivers who chose to pit. But, most of the time, most of the field will pit during the stage cautions.
The field will pit for fuel (they can go about 100 miles/65ish laps at Kansas on a tank of fuel) and they’ll usually take 4 tires. Tires give us a great chance to talk about the racetrack itself, Kansas Speedway. Kansas has long straightaways and wide turns and as such the speeds are high; they touch the low 190s at the end of the straightaway and can dip down into the 160s in the middle of the corner. The surface is fairly old, and older surfaces are more jagged, so they chew away tires. Combine this tire wear with tire heat, and lap times at Kansas can go from 30.5 seconds to 32.5 seconds from fresh tires to 50-lap old tires. Tire wear is essential to understanding oval racing and-
Oh shit shit we missed the first lap ok back to the race. Everyone’s tires are fresh so they grip super hard to the track, and they’ll pick any line through each corner in order to get through or around other cars.They started double file all bunched up, which means this is the easiest time to pass multiple cars, but is also the easiest time to wreck. The start of the race is usually more tame than other restarts, because ya can’t win a race on lap one but ya sure as shit can lose it.
The starting lineup was set yesterday when everyone went out and ran one lap each. The fastest times are in the front. But some of these cars up front are frauds, and the race winner might be hiding in P25. Let’s find out who they are.
LAP 49 -
This race is over, it’s obviously the 5 of Kyle Larson. His car quickly made a pass for second and has been working on leader Ross Chastain since about lap 10. Even with everyone pitting for fuel to make it to the stage caution on lap 80, Larson stayed on Chastain’s back bumper without interruption. But while Larson can pass Chastain, Chastain is fast enough to pass him back in the next set of corners. Both cars can drive in various lanes in the corners and still make speed, making the cars look very graceful in the process. These cars are very very hard to drive, but it looks easy on tv, due equally to driver skill and the shape of Kansas Speedway.
Kansas is a fairly steep track, and the corners have progressive banking. Progressive banking means the track gets steeper the further up you go, like a graph of house prices. Zing, hire me Bill Maher. The shortest way around the track is the bottom, where it’s 17 degrees of banking. But the top has 20 degrees of banking, which makes the car grip to the track easier. The overall speed through the corner is generally higher up there, as long as you can keep your car off the wall. This is immensely hard to do. But the middle lanes are all viable as well on this track, so cars can go anywhere to pass each other. Kyle Larson has been doing this for all of Stage 1. His car is able to carry a lot of speed in each of these lanes without “getting loose,” or sliding out of the lane and losing speed.
LAP 69 -
Oh! Uhhh where the hell did Hamlin come from? He was 5th 20 laps ago.
This is where that tire wear I was starting to talk about comes from. NASCAR rewards drivers who are smart racers over a long run, namely, those who can race without moving, turning, or braking too much while passing cars, and thus putting less wear on their tires. For the previous thirty laps, Larson and Chastain went high, low, and through the middle for corner after corner, chasing each other around the track. There were dozens of high-intensity moments where the cars were less than a yard apart. This racing is self-evidently awesome to watch in the short term, but it also contributes to the long-term drama of the race.
This style of aggressive racing can pay off in the short-term, but these moves wear out a driver’s tires, and a smart driver who knows who to methodically pass cars while taking it easy on his tires will mow past these guys in short order. It really is crazy how slow and steady actually does win the race. I see that happen constantly in racing, and in life. That has to be an all-time top 5 idiom.
Martin Truex Jr Update: Truex finished a respectable 7th in Stage 1, a quiet but impressive charge up from 13th. He has a very strong long-run car, just like his teammate Hamlin. But Hamlin just won Stage 1, and now that he has the lead, his long run speed makes him a shoe-in to win the race right? WRONG. A minute later, Hamlin loses a bunch of spots on pit road when everyone pits. Pitting is very much a team sport, and the skill of pit crews is another nerve-racking aspect of modern NASCAR. Stops are choreographed and optimized to be in the 9 second range, and a half-second delay can mean 4 spots. A 4-second delay can mean 15 spots. Keep an eye on this storyline as we start Stage 2. Hopefully, like on lap 1, this restart is clean and uneventful so the fast cars can race it out.
LAP 89 -
AHHHHH! This is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen on a race track. 3-wide is dicey, 5-wide is demented. For them to all make it through the following corner without wrecking, especially Chris Buescher, is one of the coolest high-wire acts I’ve ever seen in NASCAR. They made real human racing look like the first part of The Phantom Menace for a second. Unfortunately the Fox broadcast is much maligned, both for its sloppy camera work and sleepy broadcasting booth. NBC has half the season and their booth does a lot more excited yelling.
Truex Update: Truex went from P6 to P2 to P4 in 31 seconds in that exchange.
LAP 107 -
The racing surface has “taken rubber”, and those streaks above are little pieces of rubber that have filled the pores of the asphalt. If the sun is out, that rubber can heat up, and make the racing surface slick. It becomes much, much harder to drive through the corner without losing speed or even spinning out.
And the sun just came out! But it’s getting closer and closer to nighttime, and temperatures are starting to cool down on the track surface. So, as they say on the broadcast, “Nobody knows what this track condition is going to do.” Temperatures and grip levels fluctuate a lot throughout a race, and this can have wildly different ramifications for every car. Some guys come to life, some guys sink like a brick. Sometimes, rubber and changing temps will make one or more lanes on the track no longer viable for making speed. Some cars or drivers who depend on that lane to make speed will be non-factors going forward, and drivers with cars that are good in multiple lanes will thrive.
These changes are subtle until they’re not, and on top of them, drivers have to think about tire wear, driving around lapped cars, fuel conservation, and executing the very complicated maneuver of getting on and off pit road during the green-flag pit stops coming up on lap 118 or so (depending on strategy, yet another complication!) Crew chiefs are going to make big adjustments to the cars during the next round of pit stops to anticipate the changes the track will undergo; some drivers will get race-winning rocket ships, and some drivers will end up blasting their crew chief with cuss words like Martin Truex Jr usually does this year.
LAP 166 -
It’s the end of Stage 2 and Truex has just taken P5 from teammate Ty Gibbs on the last lap. He’s still going to need to find something to outrun Buescher, Larson, and Hamlin, but P5 is nothing to cuss at his crew chief about. You still haven’t seen a crash the entire race. Don’t worry.
The entire field pits a few laps later. In a massively important stop, Denny Hamlin once again gets caught up in pit road traffic. Chris Buescher also gets a pit road penalty. Did I mention those often derail a race and can come at any time?*** He has to restart in the back. Unlucky guy. But that’s good for Truex. It also shakes up the field massively for the stage 3 restart; lots of good cars will be in the back.
LAP 177 -
Weeee! There’s the spin we were looking for. We had cars going four-wide in the middle of the pack and it set off a chain reaction of blocks and braking that would eventually collect a few of the backmarker cars. But we just had 170 laps of wreck-free racing before this, so while this is a welcome blip, it’s not like-
LAP 185 -
Weeee! You’ll hear this a lot in NASCAR: Cautions breed cautions. Since passing is so much easier on a restart than later in a run, bunching the field up for a driver in the middle or back of the pack is like dangling a fish in front of a shark. Unfortunately, every driver is a shark who thinks the other sharks are all fish. So we get things like-
LAP 192 -
Oh come on. What happened to 75 lap green flag runs? Most of the crashes happen further towards the back, because race cars travel over undisturbed “clean” air that then gets pushed out from under the back of the car, and this new “dirty” air is much more turbulent. The air gets dirtier the further back in the pack you are.**** Still, these are the best drivers on earth, they can handle this.
LAP 199 -
Ok here we go! I know we’re all sick of the spins after four in a row but this one is fascinating. Not for the wreck, that barely matters at all, the 22 of Logano was a non-factor in this race. This opens up at least three distinct strategy options that are going to split the field for the rest of the race. On the caution before this one, cars in the very back including Hamlin and Buescher pitted, since they were already on the lead lap and had nothing to lose. That Logano caution allows them to save a little fuel while the field is under caution, and now they’re right on the edge of their fuel window (~65 laps on a tank) where they could maybe make it to the end.
Often, in a modern NASCAR race, it’s rare for teams’ strategies to diverge as wildly as we have now with 70 to go. As far to far as I can tell, here are the strategy options:
The aforementioned stay out strategy (only available to guys who pitted in the previous caution). Hope your fuel lasts.
Pit now and take ONLY right side tires to have a shorter pitstop and start ahead of the previous leaders (but behind the guys on strategy 1.) Hope that 12 lap older left side tires don’t make you too much slower than the guys behind you.
Pit for four tires, hope you can make it through the melee, and go on attack.
Our guy Truex is on strategy 3. He’s starting 16th overall. 63 to go. How’s this restart looking?
Good luck, sport. Go get ‘em.
LAP 240 -
Every strategy is working. Hamlin and Buescher are being instructed to save both fuel and tires. Larason has been on a tear running them down, and now all three are within a second of each other. The 8 of Kyle Busch is on the 2-tire strategy, hanging on around 2 seconds back. Truex is even further behind him, a chasm-like 3.5 seconds behind the leader.
LAP 256 -
Buescher and Larson have slowed considerably, a combination of extreme fuel and tire conservation. Truex will catch them soon, but he’s still 2.5 seconds behind Hamlin with 12 to go. Not enough time.
LAP 260 -
Uhhhhhh holy shit Truex is about to pass him. Hamlin’s running on fumes. Truex closed an entire second in the last lap. He’s going to pass him before they’re out of turn 4 this is insane we’re gonna w
Fuck me. There were a total of three seconds between those last two screenshots. We went from Truex has no chance, to Truex has a really good chance, to Truex is about to pass and no one will catch him, to we’re screwed, in less than two laps. Less than a minute. One more set of corners and Truex has the lead. Welcome to NASCAR.
Anyway we’ll gloss over the last restart and finish.
He’s only the fourth-billed main character of the race, and he’s overshadowed by a 1-inch margin of victory, but Truex is right there too, and it stings. Truex pitted for four tires, and restarted P10. He went from tenth place to a tenth of a second from the win in two laps. One more set of corners and Truex wins the race. Welcome to NASCAR.
🏁🏁🏁🏁🏁🏁
*- Intermediate tracks, depending on how you define them, make up one third of the schedule at most. Other styles of track race totally different, but I don’t feel like explaining them all right now.
** - I know this just makes you want to hear more about the playoffs, but trust me. Some other time. The playoff format is convoluted and bad.
***- To the best of my memory here are all the pit road penalties you can get: Too fast entering (speed above the limit when you cross the pit road entry line), too fast exiting, commitment line violation (you can’t drive over the orange square on the ground separating staying out with committing to coming to pit), too many crewmen over the wall, crewmen over the wall too soon, driving through too many other pit boxes, pitting outside of your box, equipment interference (your stuff gets in the way of other teams), and uncontrolled tire (the funniest one)
****- Do not ask me to explain aerodynamics and dirty air. If you’re a long-time NASCAR fan, keep your trap shut. We don’t want to scare the new blood.