There’s some big race going on in the auto world today, and I for one, don’t give a crap. You don’t need to know anything about my sport preferences or my politics when I say this, just nascar has never interested me beyond the occassional wreck I’d see on Sportscenter.

Truth be told though, I started really being against it when i started smoking Winston cigerettes ("No Preservatives!" = the "good-for-you" smoke). At the time the largest professional auto racing company in America was sponsered by the tobacco giant. Now I know i’m being hypocritical when i say i didn’t support a sport that was getting major revenue from a tobacco company, the same company that I was giving money to, but cancer was, has, and is my choice, and I try to keep it that way, I don’t like when it’s foisted upon others. Winston’s no longer tied to the sport (though cellphones now are, which some would say is an even bigger threat), but that doesn’t stop my utter hatred of the "sport". Time to go deeper.

Most environmentalists will decry the fuel consumption of those cars that keep turning left, and most advocates will point out that this is the biggest fallacy of auto racing. You know what, they’re both right:

"According to figures obtained in my research on the consumption rate during a single NASCAR racing event, the average consumption of a race car is about 2 miles per gallon in a 250 mile race. 125 gallons of fuel would be required per car in a NASCAR race. Usually there would be up to 40 cars in one race (even though many cars do drop out because of wrecks or auto malfunctions). That would be an equivalent of 5,000 gallons of fuel consumed per race! That’s the nearly the same amount of fuel consumed for a 737 airplane in a one way trip from D.C. to L.A.

Let’s put all of this into a proper perspective here on what constitutes as “wasting” gasoline.

The amount of gasoline America consumes each day is 320,500,000 GALLONS PER DAY!!! (March 2005). That’s 320 million gallons! Or 3700 gallons per second! Incredible!"

taken from kokonut pundits

That’s not even to mention that most race cars use extremely high-octane fuel, meaning it’s been refined to the point of minimal impact. That being said, it still doesn’t justify the output, nor the environmental aspect. At a time when most Americans are paying upwards of 3 dollars a gallon, is there any reason why we should have a sport which relies solely on fuel which gets people around?

Here’s the thing, people have been racing cars as long as we’ve had a hand to crank the motor and another engine that might outperform our own. Humans are competitive people, and by nature will try and outduel another. But Auto racing is the only "sport" which is rooted in, and relies solely on commercialism to make it, and to make worthy competition (except any computer based competitions). To wit: every other sport, be it baseball, darts, long-distance running, even skydiving or snowboarding, can be played with basic elements found in nature, and to a certain degree, can be played at a high level. While it may have it’s roots in horse and chariot racing, auto racing was born out of the birth of the automobile, hence the name. But if all nascars were replaced with electric cars, or some variation, the appeal and competitiveness of the sport would decrease dramatically, the horsepower and power (speed) would not be the same, and that’s just the fuel, not even the parts that make up the car.

What about those other parts? A typical nascar team will go through 40 tires in a single race, these spent tires are returned to goodyear after the race. Now what happens to those tires after they’re done? Being that nascar tires are radials, they can’t be reprocessed into new tires. From Goodyear’s own website in 1978 they started to use them elsewhere: "Old tires have found new uses as construction material for more than 2,000 artificial reefs and floating breakwaters, protecting harbors and providing aquatic habitat for fish….The company established a toxicology lab to determine the safety of Goodyear chemicals…. ". Even if most of the tires are being recycled into sidewalks or playgrounds, that’s still a huge expenditure and use of natural resource for one single race and one single team! Where does rubber come from? The Rainforest. You’re telling me we’ve taken one-fifth of the Amazon so grown men can spin around an oval track? hyperbole yes, but you get the point.

While there’s a market for recycled race car parts the fact remains that the entire race industry relies on (mostly) new matreials, which are not easily disposed of afterwards. Say what you want, but with redord heat waves, hurricanes and the environmental like, we should be focusing on trying to conserve what we can, you’re not going to argue that we should keep using new material always right?

In reality though, the environmental is only half the story, indeed, with race teams and companies knowing their ecological impact of a sport derived from natural resources, it’s probably the smaller part. I can see a time when nascars will switch over to ethanol (if they haven’t already) or using recycled composite material. Like most things, the bigger impact is the cultural one. What message does professional auto racing send? I like driving as much as the next person, maybe even more, but what effect does racing have? Well, look at The Fast & the Furious. Look at Talledega Nights. Look at the Speed channel. Look at the amount of business Nascar inspires and produces. Look at Dub magazine. Look at auto shows, underground race clubs, demolition derby’s, freeway chases, anything like that. Auto Racing instills that driving around aimlessly is alright, the faster the better, and honestly, i submit to you it’s not. I got over riding around for fuck’s sake when i was around 19. Racing is a product of the car mentality, but it’s also it’s biggest propagandist. Now i’m not so niave to think we’ll all someday stop using cars, but again, with wars over oil, and people stuck in traffic for hours at a time, with car deaths piling up, with the chinese and indians just starting to get into the car marketplace, we’ve got to start looking for alternatives, and the biggest promotion "vehicle" for the auto industry just doesn’t have a place in that.

Also, in tieing with the environmental aspect, have you ever seen a racetrack at night? Even when there’s no racing going on, that place is light up like giant orange fireball, and that’s without the lights being on. Most racetracks are out in the middle of nowhere, and if you go past one, there’s that eerie orange pollution ring over top of it. Combine the actual racing with the driving of the fans to the track, and you’ve got a country eyesore.

Nascar is embedded into our society, one only needs to look at the so called Nascar Dad voting bloc of the last election, or Will Ferrell’s reasoning behind making Talledega Nights: "’Anchorman’ was too abstract for studios to get their heads around. In the process, we started half joking, half not — we said we should just pick an idea that’s really accessible. What’s the biggest, fattest, funniest undeniable idea you could ever pick?" recalls Ferrell. They picked NASCAR, the holy grail of redneck manhood, and giggled." Honestly, I think some people enjoy nascar BECAUSE of the environmental and social effects, a little "fuck you" to the liberal elitists who are trying to tell them how to live. Hey, if that’s your deal, go ahead, enjoy it, and when you get flooded, either by water or people escaping their underwater coastal cities and moving to your town, you can bitch then. just like me and my cancer, you’ve got a choice, and you should know everything you can behind that choice.