116 Fun Facts About NASCAR

What does the first 'A' in NASCAR stand for?

Association: the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing was formed in 1948 because shady promoters kept leaving with the prize money before drivers were paid.

The 1947 meetings that formed NASCAR were held in the rooftop bar of which Art Deco hotel in Daytona Beach?

Streamline: after a 2014 sale the hotel was gutted to its bare walls in a $6 million renovation and reopened in 2017.

Who founded NASCAR?

Bill France Sr. ran a repair shop in Washington, D.C., moved to Daytona in the 1930s, raced on its beach course and then took over promoting the races there.

The first driver across the line in NASCAR's first top-division race in 1949 was disqualified for what?

Illegal rear springs, a bootlegger's trick for better handling, cost Glenn Dunaway the win, which went to Jim Roper, a Kansan who had finished three laps behind.

What was NASCAR's top division called in its first season, 1949?

Strictly Stock meant showroom cars with modifications banned, so one future champion borrowed a neighbor's Buick for the first race, drove it there and rolled it.

From 1971 to 2003, NASCAR's top series carried the name of which cigarette brand?

Winston became the title sponsor just as cigarette ads were banned from American TV and radio, so R. J. Reynolds moved its advertising money into racing.

Which drinks brand was the Cup Series title sponsor from 2017 to 2019?

Monster offered to extend the deal, but NASCAR turned it down and dropped title sponsors altogether, so since 2020 it has simply been the NASCAR Cup Series.

Beginning in 2026, NASCAR's second-tier national series took the name of which sponsor?

The series had been the Busch Series, the Nationwide Series and, from 2015 to 2025, the Xfinity Series.

Which tool brand, the first title sponsor of NASCAR's Truck Series, returned to the series name in 2023?

Craftsman backed the trucks from their first season in 1995 until 2008, and came back in 2023 after Stanley Black & Decker bought the brand from Sears.

Where is the NASCAR Hall of Fame, opened in 2010?

It sits in uptown Charlotte, a short drive from the race shops of most Cup teams, and its inaugural class was inducted the day after the 2010 All-Star Race.

Which NASCAR pioneer, credited with discovering drafting at the 1960 Daytona 500, got a Reagan pardon for moonshining?

Junior Johnson was never caught hauling liquor: he was jailed for about a year in Ohio over an illegal still, and the pardon came in 1986, two decades after he quit driving.

Who became the first Black driver to win at NASCAR's top level, at Jacksonville in December 1963?

Wendell Scott was not announced as the winner: officials flagged another driver and admitted the mistake only hours later, and his family did not get the trophy until 2021.

Greased Lightning, the biopic of NASCAR's first Black race winner, starred which comedian?

Richard Pryor played the Danville, Virginia, mechanic, who ran moonshine before he raced and kept his own unsponsored team going for 13 seasons.

Who was named winner of the inaugural 1959 Daytona 500, three days after the photo finish?

Lee Petty was declared the winner three days later, once photographs and newsreel film had been studied; Johnny Beauchamp had already celebrated in victory lane.

The Daytona 500 winner receives a trophy named after which General Motors design chief?

Harley J. Earl, NASCAR's second commissioner, was a friend of its founder, who named the trophy for him, and the car on it is his turbine-powered Firebird I concept.

Which network aired the 1979 Daytona 500, the first 500-mile race shown live flag-to-flag?

CBS got lucky: a snowstorm kept much of the East Coast indoors that Sunday, so millions watched a last-lap crash turn into a fistfight on live TV.

Which family took the first father-son one-two finish in Daytona 500 history in 1988?

The Allisons finished father ahead of son, but a crash four months later ended the father's career and wiped his memory of the win.

Which driver got his first Cup win, in his 463rd start, at the 2001 Daytona 500?

Michael Waltrip had gone 462 Cup races without a win, and his celebration ended with the news that his car owner, Dale Earnhardt, had died in a last-lap crash.

Who won the 2011 Daytona 500 the day after his 20th birthday, becoming the race's youngest winner?

Trevor Bayne was making only his second Cup start, and the upset stayed the only win of his 187-race Cup career.

Who won the 2022 Daytona 500, the first points race for the Next Gen car?

Austin Cindric was a rookie making just his eighth Cup start, and he won it on team owner Roger Penske's 85th birthday.

How many Cup Series races did 'the King', Richard Petty, win in his career?

Nobody else has reached 110; the total includes seven Daytona 500s and seven championships, and his final start was the 1992 season finale at Atlanta.

Richard Petty's famous red-and-blue paint scheme began as a 1972 compromise with which sponsor?

STP wanted the car all in its own red, Petty refused to give up his family's blue, and after an all-night negotiation they settled on both.

In Pixar's Cars, Richard Petty voices Strip 'The King' Weathers, modeled on which Plymouth that he raced in 1970?

Superbird: Plymouth is said to have built the high-winged car partly to win Petty back after he left for Ford in 1969, and the King wears his blue and his No. 43.

Dale Earnhardt's black Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing carried which number?

The No. 3 in black GM Goodwrench paint became so tied to him that after his death fans held three fingers aloft on the third lap of races.

Dale Earnhardt won the 1998 Daytona 500 with what glued to his dash?

A penny: Wessa Miller, a young Make-A-Wish fan, gave it to him before the race, and he glued it to the dash and won on his 20th attempt.

Which safety measure, resisted by Dale Earnhardt himself, did NASCAR make mandatory in October 2001?

The HANS device, a head-and-neck restraint Earnhardt had called 'that damn noose', became mandatory eight months after a skull fracture killed him at Daytona.

Dale Earnhardt was born in which North Carolina town?

Kannapolis renamed its minor-league baseball team the Intimidators in 2001 after he bought a share, and a nine-foot bronze statue of him stands in the town.

Who took over Dale Earnhardt's seat and won at Atlanta three weeks later by 0.006 seconds?

Kevin Harvick was handed the car, renumbered 29, a week after the crash, and the photo-finish win came in only his third Cup start.

Jeff Gordon's rainbow-liveried DuPont Chevrolet carried which number?

The No. 24 won the 1997 all-star race in a one-off Jurassic Park paint scheme, and NASCAR banned the car afterwards.

Which home-improvement chain was the main sponsor of Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet until 2018?

Lowe's backed the No. 48 through all 83 of his Cup wins, while arch-rival Home Depot spent years sponsoring a Joe Gibbs Racing car in the same races.

Who was the first driver to win three consecutive Cup championships, in 1976, 1977 and 1978?

Cale Yarborough later won the 1983 Daytona 500 in a backup car, days after flipping his own on a qualifying run that had just topped 200 mph.

Nicknamed 'the Silver Fox', which driver sits second on the all-time wins list with 105?

David Pearson rarely ran a full season, taking his 105 wins from just 574 starts, and he won the 1976 Daytona 500 by restarting his wrecked car and crawling across the line.

Which 1992 champion celebrated wins with a clockwise 'Polish victory lap'?

Alan Kulwicki drove the wrong way round so he could wave to fans from the driver's side, and he won the title in his own car before dying in a plane crash the next April.

Whose 1987 airborne crash into the Talladega catch fence prompted the introduction of restrictor plates?

Bobby Allison's car cut a tire at about 210 mph and tore down a stretch of fencing in front of the crowd, so plates became mandatory at Daytona and Talladega the next season.

Which driver won NASCAR's Most Popular Driver award a record 16 times?

Bill Elliott took his name off the 2001 ballot so that someone else could win, and fans gave that year's award to the late Dale Earnhardt.

Which three-time champion opened Fox race broadcasts with 'Boogity, boogity, boogity'?

Darrell Waltrip was dubbed 'Jaws' by a rival after their 1977 wreck at Darlington, a jab at how much he liked to talk.

Through 2025, who is the only driver to win championships in both IndyCar and the NASCAR Cup Series?

Tony Stewart took the 1997 Indy Racing League title and three Cup crowns, the last in 2011 on a tiebreaker after finishing level on points with Carl Edwards.

Who holds the record for most wins across NASCAR's three national series combined?

Kyle Busch won 234 races across the three series, 102 of them in the second tier, and twice won all three races of a single weekend at the same track.

Kyle Larson was suspended in 2020 after using a racial slur during what kind of event?

A virtual iRacing race, streamed live during the 2020 pandemic shutdown, was where he said it; his team fired him, and he came back a year later to win the title.

Which driver, nicknamed 'Sliced Bread', became the youngest Cup race winner at 19 in 2009?

Joey Logano got that first win when rain cut the New Hampshire race short, and the nickname, as in 'the greatest thing since', came from fellow racer Randy LaJoie.

Which driver, raised on a watermelon farm, smashes a watermelon after NASCAR wins?

Ross Chastain is an eighth-generation watermelon farmer from Florida, and in 2025 he crashed in practice, started last in a backup car and still won one of NASCAR's crown-jewel races.

The 2022 'Hail Melon' wall-ride at Martinsville copied a trick the driver first saw as a kid on which console?

GameCube: his brother had used the trick on him in NASCAR 2005, and in real life it took him from 10th to fifth in two corners before NASCAR banned it for 2023.

23XI Racing combines Michael Jordan's 23 with the car number of which co-owner?

Denny Hamlin has driven the No. 11 for Joe Gibbs Racing since 2005, so the name reads 23 and XI, and on Sundays he races against the cars he co-owns.

In 2013, who became the first woman to win the pole position for the Daytona 500?

Danica Patrick ran in the top ten all afternoon, became the first woman to lead the race and finished eighth, five years after winning an IndyCar race in Japan.

Which manufacturer entered the NASCAR Cup Series in 2007 alongside Chevrolet, Ford and Dodge?

Toyota tested itself in NASCAR's Truck Series from 2004 before moving up, and it went winless in that first Cup season against the three American makes.

What did NASCAR call the title playoff it introduced in 2004?

The Chase gave way to the word 'playoffs' in 2017, but NASCAR brought the old name back when it revamped the format for 2026.

From 2002 to 2019 the Cup Series season finale was held at which track?

Homestead-Miami Speedway lost the title race to Phoenix in 2020, but after six years away the season finale returned there in 2026.

The 18-inch wheels on NASCAR's Next Gen car are made of which metal?

Aluminum: they replaced 15-inch steel wheels, and each is held by a single center-locking lug nut instead of the five that tire changers used to remove and refit at every stop.

After the 2019 Daytona 500, restrictor plates were retired in favor of what device?

A tapered spacer does the same job of limiting air to the engine, and it was already in use at every other track, so one device could replace two.

In NASCAR, a solid black flag shown to a driver means what?

Report to the pits: ignore it for long enough and a black flag with a white cross follows, and the car is not scored again until it comes in.

Which Memorial Day weekend race starts in daylight and ends under the lights?

The Coca-Cola 600 is NASCAR's longest race, launched in 1960 as the World 600 to rival the Indianapolis 500 on the same holiday weekend.

Which track is nicknamed 'the Tricky Triangle'?

Pocono Raceway was laid out by Indy 500 winner Rodger Ward, who modeled its three corners on Trenton, Indianapolis and the Milwaukee Mile.

Bill Elliott, whose 212.8 mph lap at Talladega in 1987 is NASCAR's fastest, was 'Awesome Bill from' which Georgia town?

Dawsonville marks every Elliott win by sounding the siren on the town's pool room, a custom it has kept up for his son's wins too.

The inaugural 1969 race at Talladega saw most of the star drivers do what?

Most stars chose to boycott it over tire safety: tires were coming apart at the new track's speeds, so the drivers' group led by Richard Petty packed up and left.

Which track markets itself as 'The Last Great Colosseum'?

Bristol Motor Speedway rings a concrete half-mile with stands that once seated 162,000, and a 2016 college football game on its infield drew a record 156,990.

Winners at Martinsville Speedway have received what unusual trophy since 1964?

A grandfather clock has gone to every winner since 1964; Richard Petty won there a record 15 times, but three wins came too early, so he has 12 clocks.

Darlington Raceway's egg shape is said to be the result of preserving what?

A minnow pond is the usual telling: the landowner did not want his fishing pond disturbed, so builder Harold Brasington drew the turns at that end tighter and left the oval lopsided.

Johnny Mantz won the first Southern 500 in 1950 by nine laps thanks to what?

Harder-wearing tires let Johnny Mantz circle Darlington's new asphalt for more than six hours while faster rivals stopped again and again for fresh rubber.

Which New York road course returned to the NASCAR Cup Series schedule in 1986?

Watkins Glen hosted the United States Grand Prix for 20 straight years, lost it over an unpaid $800,000 debt to the teams and went bankrupt, then reopened under new owners before NASCAR came back.

Which team, the oldest still active in NASCAR, ran Jim Clark's pit stops at the 1965 Indianapolis 500?

Wood Brothers Racing was invited by Ford for its pit-stop speed, though Clark's Lotus needed only two fuel stops and no tire changes all day.

Geoff Bodine's 1984 Martinsville win was the first for which team?

Hendrick Motorsports, then a first-year outfit called All-Star Racing, was on the verge of folding until that win; in 2021 it passed Petty Enterprises' record of 268 Cup wins.

Tom Cruise's Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder took Dick Trickle's surname but was patterned after which driver?

Tim Richmond's pairing with veteran crew chief Harry Hyde shaped the film, and Richmond is said to have blown an engine on purpose in 1987, as Cole does on screen.

In Talladega Nights, Sacha Baron Cohen's Jean Girard is a rival from which racing series?

Formula One returned the compliment in 2013, when Sebastian Vettel took pole for the United States Grand Prix and shouted the film's 'shake and bake' over his radio.

The first NASCAR race held outside the United States, in July 1952, took place in which Canadian province?

Ontario's Stamford Park, a half-mile dirt track at Niagara Falls, staged the 200-lap race, and winner Buddy Shuman never won another Cup race.

Daytona's city leaders staged their first stock car race in 1936 to replace which lost beach attraction?

Land speed record runs left for Utah's salt flats in 1935 as the sand grew too rutted, so the city staged a beach race to keep visitors coming, and lost $22,000 on it.

Which revived track hosted the 2023 All-Star Race?

North Wilkesboro Speedway lost both its Cup dates after 1996 and sat empty for most of the next 26 years; the All-Star Race is an exhibition outside the season's 36 points races.

Which Miami rapper became a co-owner of NASCAR's Trackhouse Racing ahead of its 2021 debut season?

Pitbull bought into the brand-new team alongside founder Justin Marks, and stayed on as a partner until February 2025.

Which nickname did Dale Earnhardt earn in the 1987 season for his aggressive driving style?

The Intimidator stuck after that year's all-star race, and fans also knew him as the Man in Black and Ironhead.

The Daytona 500, the February opener of the NASCAR Cup season, is promoted under which nickname?

The Great American Race is also billed as the Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing, and unusually for a sport's biggest event, it comes at the start of the season rather than the end.

Which Super Bowl-winning NFL head coach started his own NASCAR Cup team in 1992?

Joe Gibbs founded the team with his sons a year before he first retired from football, and its first Cup championship followed in 2000.

Which car, the model for Paul Newman's Doc in Pixar's Cars, dominated NASCAR in the early 1950s?

Hudson Hornet drivers won 27 of the 34 top-division races in 1952. Its low 'step-down' floor gave it a lower center of gravity, so it out-cornered more powerful rivals.

Which former child actor became a full-time NASCAR Truck Series driver in 2025?

Frankie Muniz, the star of Malcolm in the Middle, first stepped away from acting to race open-wheel cars in the 2000s, then landed a full-season truck ride with Reaume Brothers Racing.

What did Juan Pablo Montoya hit under caution in the 2012 Daytona 500, starting a huge fuel fire?

A jet dryer, a trailer-mounted jet engine used to blow the track dry, was carrying 200 gallons of kerosene, and the blaze stopped the race for more than two hours.

In 2023 the NASCAR Cup Series held its first street race on a lakefront course in which city?

Chicago laid out a 2.2-mile circuit through Grant Park, and a Supercars champion making his very first Cup start won the race.

In NASCAR and IndyCar, a white flag waved at the starter's stand signals the start of what?

The final lap is the white flag's meaning in most American racing; under international FIA rules the same flag warns of a slow-moving vehicle on the track ahead.

In Talladega Nights, Ricky Bobby lives by his father's advice, 'If you ain't first,' and which two words?

"If you ain't first, you're last" is the creed of Reese Bobby, Ricky's father, played by Gary Cole, and Will Ferrell's Ricky builds his whole racing career on it.

Which Akron, Ohio company has supplied tires for NASCAR's stock car series since 1954?

Goodyear has been based in Akron since its first factory opened there in 1898, and it also supplies tires for NHRA drag racing and sports car racing.

Which beer brand sponsored Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s red No. 8 Chevrolet at his family's team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc.?

Budweiser stayed on the red No. 8 until he switched teams for 2008, a move that also cost him his familiar car number.

Which delivery company sponsored Dale Jarrett's No. 88 Ford and built ads around him racing its truck?

UPS signed on as his primary sponsor, then spent years of commercials trying to talk him into racing its trademark Big Brown Truck.

Which Missouri driver, once a substitute teacher, celebrated his NASCAR wins with a backflip off his car?

Carl Edwards borrowed the backflip from sprint car driver Tyler Walker, and once left it out after winning a race that had been cut short by rain.

Which Ford model, first sold in 1964, replaced the Fusion in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2019?

Mustang bodies took over as Ford phased out the Fusion sedan, bringing its pony car to NASCAR's top series more than half a century after its launch.

Shane van Gisbergen, who won on his NASCAR Cup debut in 2023, became the first Cup race winner from which country?

New Zealand got its first Cup winner in a three-time Supercars champion, the first driver to win on his debut in the series since Johnny Rutherford in 1963.

In 2022, which two-time Olympic stadium in Los Angeles hosted NASCAR's preseason Clash exhibition race?

Memorial Coliseum, home of the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games, swapped football for stock cars, and Jeff Gordon lit its Olympic cauldron for the occasion.

At Daytona and Talladega, where cars run in tight packs, fans call a crash that collects many cars what?

The Big One usually means a wreck of five or more cars, and the phrase is used in IndyCar and other series as well as stock cars.

In the name NASCAR, which was proposed by mechanic Red Vogt, the first 'A' stands for which word?

Association moved to the middle because the founders' first choice, National Stock Car Racing Association, already belonged to a rival body, giving National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.

Which driver gave 23XI Racing its first Cup win in a rain-shortened race at Talladega in October 2021?

Bubba Wallace was out front when the rain came, so the first victory of his own Cup career doubled as the first for the year-old team's celebrity owners.

Which Arizona-born country star competed in 35 races in NASCAR's top series, with six top-10 finishes?

Marty Robbins, the voice of the gunfighter ballad 'El Paso', scored one of those top-10 finishes in the 1973 Firecracker 400 at Daytona.

In 2023, a modified NASCAR Cup car driven by Jimmie Johnson and Jenson Button entered which endurance race?

24 Hours of Le Mans organisers gave the stock car their 'Garage 56' slot for experimental entries, marking NASCAR's 75th anniversary in the race's own centenary year.

Which Pennsylvania track has only three turns, each modelled on a turn at a different racetrack?

Pocono Raceway's designer, Indianapolis 500 winner Rodger Ward, copied one turn each from Trenton, Indianapolis and the Milwaukee Mile, which is why it is called the Tricky Triangle.

Which one-mile desert oval, known for the 'dogleg' kink in its frontstretch, became NASCAR's championship venue in 2020?

Phoenix Raceway got its dogleg because the original layout had to make room for a road course that shared parts of the oval.

Glenn Roberts, the 1962 Daytona 500 winner, got which nickname from his fastball as an American Legion pitcher?

Fireball had nothing to do with speed on the track: it came from his days pitching for the Zellwood Mud Hens, and it followed him to 33 wins in NASCAR's top division.

Which former aerospace engineer was the first woman to race in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500?

Janet Guthrie made both starts in 1977, and she was also the first woman to lead a lap in NASCAR's top series.

Jeff Gordon's family moved to Pittsboro, Indiana, to help his racing, but in which state was he born?

California is where he was born, in the Bay Area city of Vallejo, and the family moved east because Indiana offered more opportunities for younger racers.

Which oil-treatment brand began a 28-year sponsorship of Richard Petty's cars in 1972, ending his all-blue paint job?

STP wanted the cars entirely in its own orange-red and Petty refused to give up his blue, so after an all-night negotiation they settled on the famous two-tone scheme.

Which driver won 40 Cup races and finished second in the standings five times without ever taking the championship?

Mark Martin came agonisingly close across two decades: his last runner-up finish, in 2009, came at the age of 50, some 19 years after his first.

Tim Flock won a 1953 NASCAR race with which unusual co-driver, named Jocko Flocko, riding along in the car?

A monkey named Jocko Flocko rode to victory that day, then was retired two weeks later after a pebble hit him mid-race and the pit stop to remove him cost a likely win.

Which cereal maker sponsored the No. 5 Chevrolet that Terry Labonte drove to the 1996 Cup championship?

Kellogg's had already backed him at a smaller team in 1993 and followed him to his new ride, where he took his second title a record twelve years after his first.

Which Wisconsin driver won the 2003 Cup championship with only one race victory all season?

Matt Kenseth took the points lead at the season's fourth race, right after his lone win at Las Vegas, and built the title on eleven top-five finishes.

Which carmaker left the NASCAR Cup Series after 2012, the year Brad Keselowski won the title in one of its cars?

Dodge had come back in 2001 after a 15-year absence, and it bowed out with the drivers' title in hand, leaving only three manufacturers in the series.

Which open-wheel star won the 1967 Daytona 500, two years before his only Indianapolis 500 victory?

Mario Andretti won it for the Holman-Moody team, and after adding a Grand Prix world title in 1978 he became the only driver to have taken all three prizes.

Which NASCAR Cup team owner bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IndyCar from the Hulman family in 2019?

Roger Penske, a former racer nicknamed 'the Captain', has also won NASCAR Cup championships as an owner, including three in a row from 2022 to 2024.

Which tool brand, the original 1995 title sponsor of NASCAR's Truck Series, returned to the series name in 2023?

Craftsman came back after Stanley Black & Decker, which had bought the brand from Sears in 2017, signed a multi-year deal with NASCAR.

Which nickname, coined on air by Benny Parsons in 2003, goes to the lapped car that gets a lap back under caution?

The lucky dog rule, officially the free pass, was brought in to stop drivers racing each other back to the start-finish line when a caution came out.

In 2012 the NASCAR Cup Series dropped carburetors from its V8 engines in favor of which technology?

Fuel injection was first meant to arrive midway through the 2011 season, but NASCAR decided before that year began to put the change off until the next one.

The Car of Tomorrow, introduced to the NASCAR Cup Series in 2007, first replaced the trunk-lid spoiler with what?

A rear wing had not been seen on NASCAR's top cars since 1970, and it lasted only three years before officials went back to the spoiler amid fears the wing helped cars get airborne.

Which telecom brand replaced a cigarette maker as title sponsor of NASCAR's top series in 2004?

Nextel had its name on the Cup for four seasons, and once the takeover by Sprint was complete the series was rebranded again.

Which Monterrey native, the 2016 Xfinity Series champion, became the first Mexican-born winner of a NASCAR Cup race?

Daniel Suárez got the landmark win on the road course at Sonoma, having already been the first foreign-born champion of a major NASCAR national series.

Ryan Newman, nicknamed 'Rocket Man' for his many poles, earned an engineering degree from which Indiana university?

Purdue awarded the degree in 2001, when he was already combining his studies with a part-time schedule of NASCAR and ARCA races.

Which devices, required on NASCAR cars since 1994, pop open during a backward spin to keep the car on the ground?

Roof flaps stay stowed in normal running, then spring up when the car turns backwards to disrupt the airflow over the roof and cut the lift that would send it airborne.

Which 'soft wall' designed by University of Nebraska engineers was first installed at Indianapolis in 2002?

SAFER barrier sections put steel tubes in front of bundles of foam, and nearly every oval on the NASCAR and IndyCar circuits had installed them by 2005.

Which crew chief guided Jimmie Johnson to 81 Cup wins and became the only one to win five consecutive championships?

Chad Knaus started early: by the age of 14 he was serving as crew chief during his father's championship season at Rockford Speedway.

NASCAR ran a separate division from 1956 until 1959, with its own Daytona 500 qualifying race, for which cars?

Convertibles made up 20 of the 59 starters in the 1959 Daytona 500, and their separate qualifier grew into the twin Duel races that set the field.

Which historic short track began hosting NASCAR's All-Star Race in 2023, with a moonshine-still trophy?

North Wilkesboro Speedway landed the race in NASCAR's 75th anniversary season, and the replica still on the trophy honoured the sport's bootlegging roots.

Which driver, racing with a leg brace after a war injury, won the first title in NASCAR's top division in 1949?

Red Byron fitted two stirrup pins to his clutch pedal so that, together with the brace, his injured left leg could work it.

Which 1980 Daytona 500 winner had earlier become the first driver to exceed 200 mph on a closed course?

Buddy Baker broke the barrier at Talladega on March 24, 1970, in a winged Dodge Charger Daytona that Chrysler's engineers ran as a test car.

In which Georgia town does a pool-room siren sound whenever hometown heroes Bill or Chase Elliott win a race?

Dawsonville gave the elder Elliott his nickname, 'Awesome Bill from Dawsonville', and the siren sits on the Dawsonville Pool Room near the city square.