Over huge swaths of the Unite States, country is about all you can find on the car radio — all those songs about tormented love, mommy going away or daddy dying, calculated to make the toughest among us break into floods over the steering wheel as we head through Texas or Tennessee.
People in most big cities in the US probably assume the old pecking order in US spectator sports (1 American football, 2 baseball, 3 basketball, 4 ice hockey) still exists and will stay that way for ever. But they don’t hear the country music and they can’t hear the roar of the engines either. Stock-car racing or, as it is known in the US, Nascar, is transforming the sports landscape.
And, as in the songs, daddy did die. Two years ago Dale Earnhardt — the leading driver in the sport — was killed in a crash at Daytona.
On April 29, which would have been Earnhardt’s 52nd birthday, the fans were allowed to tour his garage in North Carolina. About 13 000 people turned up. Some drove across the country; some queued all night; many cried. It is a cult acquiring trappings of the Elvis industry: when a goat was born in some remote farm with markings that resembled a three, the number on Earnhardt’s car, pilgrims came from all quarters to witness what was assumed to be a divine manifestation.
This is a sport that knows how to treat its fans and its sponsors. One driver, Jeff Gordon, got out of his car after a victory and said: ”I’d like to thank God, Pepsi and Fritos.”
Above all, Earnhardt’s death gave the sport a fresh narrative, because daddy had a son and Dale Jnr is a racer, who insisted that he would compete the following weekend as usual because that is what the old man would have wanted. ”Little E” has become a star in his own right, as a sex symbol who is still seen as a regular guy.
And here is the secret of Nascar’s success. Despite appearances most Americans do not yet weigh 200kg, which pretty much rules out American football. Nor are they 2m tall at least, which rules out basketball. Nor can they hit a 180km fastball 400m or skate and fight simultaneously.
But they can all race away from the traffic lights in a beat-up Chevy and see themselves as the new Dale Earnhardt. —