Babes, Bordeaux & Billy Bobs

• Share

(3 of 5)

Mark Martin, the health freak who got other drivers to hire personal trainers to keep up with him, lifts weights at 5:45 every morning. "I used to drink too much, and I lived on cheeseburgers and French fries. But the new generation of race-car drivers is going to have to be athletic." On a hot day, a driver can start to fade at 400 miles. "Being in shape could make the difference not only between first or second place but between living and dying," Martin says.

If there is a traditionalist left in racing, it has to be Earnhardt, whose nickname is the Intimidator. I tell him Martin's pre-race meal is tuna with brown mustard on wheat bread. If Earnhardt says he eats the same thing, I'm going to cover golf. "My pre-race meal is steak and potatoes," Earnhardt says. "And when Mark's f______ tuna runs out on him at 400 miles, my steak will just be kicking in."

I'll give the story another week.

DIEHARD 500
Talladega, Ala.
It has not come to the attention of eastern Alabama that the Civil War ended. The track infield has so many Confederate flags flying that it looks like a Klan picnic. When NASCAR senior vice president Brian France tells potential sponsors that "our fans are much savvier than people give them credit for," it is to counter this very sight. NASCAR is apoplectic at the thought of racing's being labeled a racist sport, and it's desperate to escape an image of the race fan as a redneck with his gut hanging out.

Speaking of which:

"This is a white man's sport," a 38-year-old landscaper from Auburn, Ala., tells me. "Blacks have taken over all the other sports. Not that I have anything against the blacks."

"I do," says an 18-year-old friend who came to the racetrack in a converted bus and erected not one but two Confederate flags atop it.

"But how often do you hear about a white guy involved with drugs or something like Darryl Strawberry?" the landscaper goes on. O.K., we won't remind him about the Packers' Brett Favre--the celebrity starter for the Daytona 500 who had to beat a prescription-drug addiction before he beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.

NASCAR likens car racing to ice hockey in its appeal--mostly white, yes, but diversifying. NASCAR has a handful of black crew members and drivers, and one team is owned by basketball legend Julius Erving and former pro-football star Joe Washington. "Whether you're selling soft drinks, snack foods or a sport, all good marketers know it is important for every single person to want to buy their product," says France. "It is no different for us."

The track at Talladega is so big--2.66 miles--that between 20,000 and 30,000 fans can set up their campers on the infield and watch the race from there. It's like a small city, with good neighborhoods and bad. Guys with pickups spin doughnuts in the mud, then stand an Ellie May or a Daisy up in the back and drive slowly through cheering throngs. When the girl collects enough Mardi Gras beads from slobbering Bubbas, she answers their obscene chant with a lift of her shirt. Fights break out. Sirens wail. It's like spring break, except nobody came from college.

There's even a gated community called the Front Runners Club, which charges $500 per motor-home parking space. It's in this section that I find two black guys and tell them they must have taken a wrong turn, because racing is a white man's sport. Cloyd Nightingale, 46, turns to his friend Johnny Hill, 52, and they bust out laughing. "It's a white man's sport," Nightingale repeats to his friend. They're both truck drivers from Memphis, Tenn., and big race fans. "The flags don't bother us," says Hill. "It's not like the world is any different here than it is at home, in school, at the office." Says Nightingale: "Tell them black people love racing too."

So what's not to like about Jeff Gordon? "He kind of looks gay," says Doris O'Bryant while selling $10 Fans Against Gordon T shirts outside the Talladega racetrack. The acronym is like something of an inside joke, and one suspects the wink it produces leads to an inevitable flatulence joke or two.

The T shirt has a little sketch of Gordon's car upside down and the words THE WAY IT SHOULD BE. Just up the road, Doris' husband Todd is making a sale to a Missouri man who says, "He's a little cocky, but he's from the north."

And that is clearly a big part of it. NASCAR didn't go national until a Yankee became its star, and resentment is the breeze that keeps those rebel flags flying. "I'm not one of those redneck hillbillies," Todd O'Bryant says. "I just think Gordon needs to be a little more down to earth."

The object of this scorn walks into his trailer, where I'm waiting to put a magnifying glass on him, and says, "Hey, what's up?" in a slight Midwestern drawl. Gordon grew up in California, but his parents moved him to Indiana at 14 because he'd been racing midget cars since he was a five-year-old, and there was more action in Indiana.