NASCAR

In the years immediately following World War II, stock-car racing was experiencing the greatest popularity it had ever seen. Tracks throughout the country were drawing more drivers, and bigger crowds.

Nonetheless, there was a serious lack of organization. From track to track, rules were different. Some tracks were just makeshift facilities, built to produce one big show at a county fair or something similar to capitalize on the crowds flocking to the events. Other tracks were more suited to handle… Show more the cars, but not the crowds. Some could manage both, but did little to adhere to rules set by other tracks.

In December 1947, Bill France Sr., of Daytona Beach, Fla., organized a meeting at the Streamline Hotel across the street from the Atlantic Ocean to discuss the problems facing stock-car racing.

France had come to Florida from Washington, D.C., years earlier. He operated a local service station and also promoted races on the city's famed beach-road courses, often racing himself. He was a man of strong will -- and ambition. Thus, by the time that meeting at the Streamline Hotel was complete, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing was born. Few knew when the meeting adjourned if the organization would be successful. In fact, there were skeptics who believed it never would work.

Not even France, who believed a sanctioning body was exactly what the sport of stock-car racing needed, could have envisioned what NASCAR has become today.

Things came together quickly. The first NASCAR-sanctioned race was held on Daytona's beach course Feb. 15, 1948, just two months after the organizational meeting. Red Byron, a stock car legend from Atlanta, won the event in his Ford Modified. Six days later on Feb. 21, 1948, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing was incorporated.

It was 1949, however, when what is now the Cup Series, the premier racing division in America, was born.

Jim Roper of Great Bend, Kan., was the winner of the first ever NASCAR Grand National (now Sprint Cup) event, held at the Charlotte (N.C.) Fairgrounds on June 19, 1949. A tremendous crowd attended the event to see automobiles with the appearance of a street-car race door-to-door. The new racing series was off and running. And it was an immediate success.

Plans immediately were made for ways to bring bigger, faster races to bigger, hungrier crowds and less than a year later (1950), the country's first asphalt superspeedway, Darlington Raceway in South Carolina, opened its doors for the new division.

The first decade for the Cup Series was one of tremendous growth. Characters became heroes and fans hung on every turn of the wheel, watching drivers manhandle cars at speeds fans wished they could legally run themselves.

Names like Lee Petty, Fireball Roberts, Buck Baker, Herb Thomas, the Flock brothers, Bill Rexford, Paul Goldsmith and others became as well-known to race fans as Willie, Mickey and the Duke were to baseball fans.

Looking to the future, and the past with the success of Darlington, Bill France Sr., began construction of a 2.5-mile, high-banked superspeedway four miles off the beach in Daytona Beach.

By the end of NASCAR's first decade, the city not only had held on to its racing roots, but had outgrown the beach and, in 1959, moved events to Daytona International Speedway. With its long back straightaway and sweeping high-banked turns of more than 30 degrees, the 2.5-mile tri-oval was one of the largest speedways in the world.

In the first race, fans were treated to something that each year still brings millions of fans to NASCAR races -- close competition.

The first Daytona 500 didn't end for three days. It took that long for NASCAR officials to study a photograph of the finish between Petty and Johnny Beauchamp before declaring Petty the winner.

The hook had been set.

The following year (1960), superspeedways were opened just outside Atlanta and Charlotte. ABC televised the 1961 Firecracker 250 from Daytona Beach as part of its Wide World of Sports.

Lee Petty's son Richard, who soon would be referred to as "The King" of stock-car racing, Buddy Baker, Cale Yarborough, Ned Jarrett, David Pearson and Bobby Allison led NASCAR racing through an era that featured a schedule of more than 60 races a year on tracks from Florida to California to Maine.

Fan interest grew and the demand for bigger, faster tracks was heard. In 1969, France opened the 2.66-mile Alabama International Motor Speedway (now known as Talladega Superspeedway), the largest and fastest motorsports oval in the world. New tracks sprang up in Brooklyn, Mich., (70 miles southwest of Detroit), Dover, Del., (between Philadelphia and Baltimore) and Pocono, Pa., two hours from Manhattan.

The decade of the 1970s brought further change, including one at the top when Bill France Sr., passed the torch of leadership of NASCAR to his son Bill Jr. on Jan. 10,1972.

Corporate sponsorship of the series by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company through its Winston brand began in 1971 and NASCAR's premier division was then known as the Winston Cup Series.

In 1976, NASCAR's premier division took the lead in worldwide motorsports attendance for the first time with more than 1.4 million spectators making their way to events, according to figures from the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. That lead never has been relinquished.

Television exposure grew as well. The 1979 Daytona 500 became the first 500-mile race in history to be telecast live in its entirety. In 1981, NASCAR moved it's annual awards ceremony to New York City from Daytona Beach for the first time.

By the mid 1980s, Fortune 500 companies not only were involved in sponsoring NASCAR, but individual races and teams as well.

Drivers such as Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, Bill Elliott and others were rising to challenge Petty and Allison and Yarborough and displaying the colors of detergents and coffees and cereals on the hoods of their cars while doing it.

Major consumer packaging companies like Kellogg's, General Foods, and Procter & Gamble were realizing what Bill France Sr. knew in the late 1940s -- stock-car racing was big.

In 1982, NASCAR consolidated the Late Model Sportsman Division into a new series. Since rising costs had made weekly racing for the Late Model stock cars difficult, the idea behind the creation of the series was to build big races, and to bring all of the regional-stars of the series together for all of the races.

As the decade of the 1990s began, perhaps no one but the sports visionaries could have imagined the growth NASCAR would undertake. Without question it was an exciting time. NASCAR began its meteoric rise by expansion in 1993 to New Hampshire Motor Speedway -- 70 miles north of Boston -- and in 1994, to the capital of open-wheel racing, Indianapolis.

In May 1994, NASCAR introduced a new series, the Craftsman Truck Series, involving full-sized, full-bodied pickup trucks. After several exhibition events, the first point event in the new series was held in February 1995.

At the same time, NASCAR's at-track attendance was growing monumentally. The NASCAR Lifestyle was becoming a national phenomenon with cover stories in Forbes and Sports Illustrated. To help feed the tremendous growth, NASCAR launched its official Web site in 1995 (www.nascar.com) and in 1997, NASCAR branched out again adding races in top 10 markets like Los Angeles, Dallas/Ft. Worth and added a second date in New Hampshire.

The 1998 season marked the celebration of NASCAR's 50th Anniversary with an unprecedented integrated marketing campaign to celebrate NASCAR's past, present and future. NASCAR's top division expanded once again to Las Vegas while the Busch Series expanded to Pikes Peak International Raceway in Colorado, and the Truck Series included new races at St. Louis, Memphis and Pikes Peak.

From 1993 to 1998, the Cup Series at-track attendance alone grew 57 percent (by 2.2 million) to more than 6.3 million and its top three divisions combined grew a staggering 80 percent (by 4.1 million), to more than 9.3 million.

By 1989, just 10 years after the first 500-mile race to be broadcast live flag-to-flag, every race on the Cup Series schedule was televised, nearly all of them live.

Topping off NASCAR's explosion in the 1990s was the announcement in November 1999 of a consolidated television package with FOX Sports/FX and NBC Sports/TNT for the Cup and Busch series beginning in 2001. At the same time, DaimlerChrysler announced intentions to return its Dodge nameplate to NASCAR's top division for 2001, after a 15-year hiatus.

In November 2000, Mike Helton became the third president in NASCAR history as the torch of leadership passed to a non-France family member for the first time.

By the turn of the century, nothing could stand in the way of NASCAR's raging success. New stars emerged such as Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte and second-generation driver Dale Jarrett. NASCAR's drivers, teams and tracks once again saw unprecedented exposure, this time with the aid of an expanded 36-race schedule and its new television package in 2001.

The TV story was proving a remarkable success as viewership for the Daytona 500 grew 48 percent (more than 6 million) to 18.7 million viewers between 1993 and 2002. When FOX Sports broadcast its first Daytona 500 in 2001, viewership increased 32 percent (4.1 million) to more than 17 million from the 2000 broadcast.

As Tony Stewart was crowned NASCAR's 2002 champion, close observers of the sport saw a youth movement swelling. NASCAR's "Young Guns," drivers such as Ryan Newman, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt Jr., were evidence of labor pains to a new era.

In 2003, NASCAR made two major announcements to help the dawn of the new era become even clearer. NASCAR announced in June that Nextel would become the new series sponsor in 2004, replacing R.J. Reynolds' Winston brand after 33 years. Three months later, in September, Brian Z. France was named NASCAR's CEO and Chairman of the Board replacing his father, Bill France Jr.

A steady parade of changes has followed. The Chase for the NASCAR Nextel Cup was announced at the start of 2004, ushering in a new format by which to determine the champion of NASCAR's premier series. In 2006, Toyota announced a move into all three of NASCAR's national series. In 2007 it was announced that the premier series' name would be changed to the Sprint Cup Series. In addition, 2007 also saw the announcement that Nationwide Insurance would replace Anheuser Busch as main sponsor of NASCAR's No. 2 series. And, there was the phasing-in of NASCAR's safety-oriented new car.

But no matter the year, there have always been -- and always will be -- constants: Close, safe competition, fair stewardship and drivers who are genuine American heroes.

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