History of NASCAR

The nation was going through a tremendous period of change in 1947. Just a couple of years out of a war, everything was getting back to normal. In fact, things were going well. The economy was on the upswing. The country was in a positive mood and the heroes had shifted from the battlefield to the ball field and the movie screen. And, of course, to the race track.

Stock car racing was experiencing the greatest popularity it had ever witnessed. Tracks all over the country were drawing more drivers and racing in front of bigger crowds.

But cohesiveness was lacking. From track to track, rules varied. 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 the cars, but not the crowds. Some could manage both, but did little to adhere to rules set by neighboring tracks.

In December of 1947, Bill France Sr., of Daytona Beach, Fla., organized a meeting at the Streamline Hotel in town to discuss the matters facing stock car racing.

France had come to Florida from Washington, D.C., years earlier and operated a local service station as well as promoted events on the city's famed beach course that he often raced in himself. From that meeting, 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 known as the NASCAR Sprint 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 NASCAR 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 compete 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 larger, hungrier crowds and less than a year later (1950), the country's first asphalt superspeedway, Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina, opened for the new division.

The first decade for the series was one of tremendous growth. Drivers became heroes and fans hung on every turn of the wheel, watching them 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, coupled with the successful debut of Darlington, France began construction of a 2.5-mile, highbanked superspeedway four miles off the beach in Daytona.

France had helped lead the fight to keep racing affiliated with the city. When those looking to set land speed records began opting for the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah as a result of the incoming and outgoing tides and beachfront development at Daytona Beach being a factor, the city wanted to maintain one of its main attractions - fast cars and the beach. By the end of NASCAR's first decade, the city not only had held onto its racing roots, but had outgrown the beach and, in 1959, moved events to Daytona International Speedway. With its long back straightaway and sweeping highbanked turns of 31 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 annually still brings millions of fans to NASCAR races - close competition.

The first Daytona 500 did not have an official winner for three days, the result of a thrilling photo finish. It took that long for NASCAR officials to study photographs and films 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 legendary "Wide World of Sports" show.

New heroes emerged.

Richard Petty, the son of Lee, soon would be referred to as "The King" of stock car racing. Buddy Baker, Cale Yarborough, Ned Jarrett, David Pearson and Bobby Allison joined Petty in leading 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 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 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 NASCAR Winston Cup Series. Reynolds' involvement later led to the NASCAR Winston West Series and the NASCAR Winston Racing Series (now NASCAR Dodge Weekly Series) - weekly events held at tracks nationwide with drivers vying for 10 regional titles, a national championship, and today, a point fund worth over $1.7 million.

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 compiled by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. That top position 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 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 the likes of 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 France Sr. knew in the late 1940s - stock car racing was far reaching.

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.

Anheuser-Busch, Inc., of St. Louis, Mo., became the sponsor of the new NASCAR Budweiser Late Model Sportsman Series. In 1984, the Busch brand took over the sponsorship in what would become today's NASCAR Busch Series.

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

Close competition and high speeds in cars that have a "stock" appearance have been the hallmark of the NASCAR's top division through the years.

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 International Speedway - 70 miles north of Boston - and in 1994, to the nation's open-wheel capital of racing, Indianapolis.

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

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 website in 1995 (www.nascar.com) and in 1997, NASCAR branched out again, adding races in top-10 markets such as Los Angeles, Dallas/Ft. Worth and 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 NASCAR Busch Series expanded to Pikes Peak International Raceway in Colorado, and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series included new races at St. Louis, Memphis, and Pikes Peak.

From 1993 to 1998, the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series attracts attendance alone grew 57 percent (by 2.2 million) to over 6.3 million and its top three divisions combined grew a staggering 80 percent (by 4.1 million), to over 9.3 million.

Topping off NASCAR's explosion in the `90s was the announcement in November 1999 of a consolidated television package with FOX Sports/FX and NBC Sports/TNT for coverage of NASCAR's premier division and NASCAR 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.

As the sports fan base grew, NASCAR grew internally as well. In November of 2000, Mike Helton became the third president in NASCAR history as the torch of leadership was 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 enjoyed unprecedented exposure, this time with the aid of an expanded 36-race schedule and the new television package.

The television partnership was proving to be a remarkable success, with a 48 percent increase (by 3.7 million) to over 5.4 million households for the Daytona 500 between 1993 and 2002. The increase from 2000 to 2001 for the Daytona 500 alone was 20 percent (by 1.7 million) to more than 10.1 million households.

As Tony Stewart was crowned NASCAR's 2002 champion, close observers of the sport witnessed a youth movement swelling. NASCAR's "Young Guns," drivers such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Jimmie Johnson, Ryan Newman and Kevin Harvick 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 seasons. Four months later in October, Brian Z. France became NASCAR's CEO and Chairman of the Board replacing his father.

In January 2004, Brian France announced a new format to determine NASCAR's premier series champion. The Chase for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup, as the new program was known, proved successful with the 2004 champion - Kurt Busch - being determined in the final turn on the final lap at Homestead- Miami Speedway, the season's final race.

The 2005 NASCAR season provided a second NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series championship for Tony Stewart and the third title for car owner Joe Gibbs. The season also produced the series' youngest race winner, with Kyle Busch's victory at California.

Dodge's new Charger model returned to NASCAR competition, marking the first time since 1977 that a Charger has won a NASCAR event. Martin Truex Jr. won his second consecutive NASCAR Busch Series title, giving Dale Earnhardt, Inc. the series lead with four championships. And after many years of trying, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series owner Jim Smith and his driver Ted Musgrave each won their first NASCAR championship. All three series championships were determined by less than 70 points each with Stewart and runner-up Greg Biffle waging the closest battle with a 35 point margin for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series title.

NASCAR has made tremendous strides since that first meeting at the Streamline Hotel. With the 2006 season upon us, several characteristics of the sport have remained constant fierce, close competition, fair stewardship and drivers who have become genuine American heroes and those things will never change.