Mingling with the good ol' boys of NASCAR

I'm saying nothing. But his remarks brought what is known as 'a wry smile' to my face. So far as I know, openly carrying a gun remains illegal in Brazil; such is not the case in Florida, where I recently spent a week for the Daytona 500.

On the drive back to the hotel each evening we passed an establishment known as 'Buck's Gun Rack', in front of which a beguiling neon sign advertised 'All Used Revolvers 20% Off. The emporium was unhappily sited on Martin Luther King Boulevard, but the irony seemed lost on most of those to whom I mentioned it.

Florida's gun laws are apparently the loosest in the United States, and it was recently decreed kosher to carry a hand gun at all times so long as it is openly displayed - in a holster, something mainstream like that. Illegal still is a concealed weapon, so the man flouting the law in a bar or wherever is not Billy the Kid, but the fellow in the bulging sports jacket.

Another world, indeed, it is down there. In motor racing, too. I'd been to Daytona for NASCAR races three times before, the first in 1972, and I was struck on this occasion by the change in the old order. Even in '84 most of the stock car stars seemed fixed in their firmament, but lost to retirement since have been David Pearson, Benny Parsons, Buddy Baker and Cale Yarborough; lost to injury Bobby Allison, who won the 500 just a year ago, at the age of 51.

Of the old guard there remains only Richard Petty, who ran his first NASCAR race on July 19, 1958, the day Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn finished 1-2 for Ferrari at Silverstone. Race driving is a career in America.

Petty scored his 200th victory in the last NASCAR race I saw, the Firecracker 400 of 1984. He hasn't won since, and a lot of people wish he would stop.

I wandered into his garage. There he sat, spare, almost gaunt, on the workbench, distractedly seeking a light for the latest cigar in the chain. Rosberg apart, "Gotta match?" is not traditionally a racing driver's opening remark. He chatted easily, smiled a lot.

Too much of this has an unsettling effect. Going on 20 years of covering Formula 1 leaves you generally unprepared for easy manners from people in driving suits. I went to find Bill Elliott, very much the superstar of the moment. Same story. 'Awesome Bill from Dawsonville' is what the fans call him, and his drawl is something even by southern standards. He makes Petty sound clipped.

The Daytona 500 is the Super Bowl of stock car racing, and Elliott knew he was out of it. A week earlier a blown tyre had pitched him into the wall at close to 200mph, badly breaking his left wrist. "There wasn't a thing I could do 'bout it," he shrugged. "Didn't even have time to come off the gas, or nothin'..."

I can think of race drivers who'd sit at home in these circumstances, venturing out only to bank the insurance cheques. Not this man: "I had to go qualify, see what I could do..."

What he did was take the Ford Thunderbird round at over 194mph. Only two of the men with both arms on duty were quicker. How, I added, had he managed it?

"Well, you know how it is when you're drivin' along with a Coke in one hand? It was exactly that deal. I had my left arm just layin' there in my lap. Now, the thing of it is that you're so out o' control in qualifyin' that you gotta let it hang out. That lap... I made it through the first turn, would I make it through the second? Got through that too, out onto the back straightaway, thinkin', 'God, I don't wanna go into three!', but I made it all around, come across the start-finish line, and cut it off..."

What if, I ventured, you'd got sideways at some point?

"Well, that woulda been the negative side of the deal," Elliott replied. Yes, I said, I could see that. "The doctors said I really shouldn't break the wrist some more..."

Ford's Michael Kranefuss thinks very highly of him, both as man and driver: "I've no doubts whatever he'd succeed in anything, including Formula 1. We took him to Watkins Glen, put him in a GTO Mustang for his first road race, and he was incredible through that quick chicane - sideways without lifting. I remember Klaus Ludwig coming back after watching him, saying 'I don't believe this guy!'

"I've never known any driver so completely at ease at very high speeds," Kranefuss goes on. "At Talladega, I've seen him work on the car in the paddock, get in, one warm-up lap, then 216. Back in, a couple of adjustments, out again, 218!

"Bill is very cool. One thing he's crazy about is flying, and not long ago he was taken up in an F-16 fighter. They staged a mock dog fight for him -and in the course of it another F-16 clipped them. They flew back 45 minutes to base with a third of one wing missing, but he was quite calm about it..."

Would you like to drive a Fl car some time? I asked Elliott. He grinned. "Mmmm, I would, yes. But maybe I like my legs too well..."

Sadly, there was no question of his running in the Daytona 500, although he did start the race, handing over to relief driver Jody Ridley at the first stop. Watching from the roof of his camper, he later saw his car tank into the wall at Turn 2. Not a good week for the reigning Winston Cup Champion, all told.

NASCAR is on a roll, and its popularity isn't confined to the South, either. They have two races each season at Pocono, and crowd figures annihilate those for the Indycar 500-miler there. All right, CART and publicity are no more than nodding acquaintances, but remember, too, that NASCAR has run a race at Watkins Glen the last three years, and it pulls a bigger crowd than the Grand Prix ever did.

The clue to its success, I believe, lies close to the surface. Bill France, the man who started it all, sums up its aims neatly and unequivocally in his forward to the rules book: "For over three decades NASCAR has endeav-oured to make stock car auto racing highly competitive, affordable, safe and entertaining for American racing fans and competitors". Mark that word 'entertaining'.

At any cost, the quality of the racing must be maintained. That's always been France's dictum, and presumably explains why his races are sold out ahead of time. At Daytona I saw tickets changing hands on race morning for five times their face value. Tracks everywhere are building more stands. Sponsors appear to be queuing.

I mulled these things over, then thought of Jerez, where they announce the crowd changes to the drivers. Thought, too, of spectator admission charges at Grands Prix. At all NASCAR races kids under 12 get in free, which must be some incentive for their parents to go to the race rather than stay home and watch it on the box. All 29 races, incidentally, are televised.

Ford Motor Company spends $5 million a year on NASCAR - and that includes engines, spares, sheet metal and advertising and promotion. Works out about the same as a top Fl driver's retainer, that does. Seems like good value.

Recent rule changes have slowed the stock cars down a little, bringing forth complaints that overtaking is too difficult now. But let's keep a sense of perspective: in the 500 the lead changed 22 times - and between 10 different drivers.

As a point of comparison, I checked back to last year's Fl season, and rather wish I hadn't. Not until our fifth race (Montreal) did one driver pass another for the lead. And in more than half the Grands Prix there were no lead changes at all...

The age-old argument, of course, is that Fl is art, on a separate level from everything else, and that to expect much actual racing is unrealistic, even slightly vulgar. And I know that to be inch-perfect around somewhere like Monte Carlo, shaving barriers left and right, calls for a precision that demands the word 'art'. But what you don't get at Monte Carlo, you don't get racing.

"...and there's a group of just 10 cars starting to break away at the front now," I heard a Daytona commentator say at one point. Doubt if I'll hear that in Rio. Once in a while it's good to come out of a rarefied atmosphere. Pity about the guns, though. The negative side of the deal, as Mr Elliott would say.