NASCAR History

You could say that it all started on Daytona Beach. In the early 1900’s, that area was famed for setting land speed records. In 1936 Daytona Beach began hosting car racing events when another area, the Bonneville Salt Flats, took over as the number one place to attempt land speed records.

Stock car racing originated from bootlegging when the 18th Amendment, Prohibition of alcohol, passed. Bootleggers would modify their vehicles so they could go faster and outrun police cars. With the 21st Amendment, the repeal of Prohibition, in 1933, it was no longer necessary to evade police, but many drivers continued the practice of bootlegging, or ‘runnin shine’ (moonshine) to avoid paying taxes on the product. By the 1940s, the cars had improved, and the bootleggers would race them for money. Southerners began watching these races, and NASCAR was born.

But not until 1947, when Bill France, Sr. decided that NASCAR would fail without proper organization and sanctioning, was the development of NASCAR really underway. Towards the end of the year, France began meeting with racers and promoters, and by February of 1948, NASCAR was formed.

Though three different divisions were formed: Modified, Roadsters, and Strictly Stock, only the Modified series proved popular with fans and feasible for the auto industry. There were 52 Modified dirt track races on the schedule in 1948. The first NASCAR race ever held was at Daytona Beach on February 15, 1948, won by Red Byron, who was to become the first series winner as well.

By 1949, the auto industry had changed enough so that the “Strictly Stock” division could be run. The first “Strictly Stock” race was held at Charlotte Speedway in June of 1949. In these early races, the name “Strictly Stock” was almost literal; drivers would race with nearly no modifications to their vehicles. Eventually renamed “Grand National,” NASCAR began to allow modifications for safety, speed and handling in this series.

By the 1960s, the vehicles that were used on the track were built for racing, but still had stock bodies. During this time period, most of the tracks raced on were half a mile or one mile. The exception was the one superspeedway in Darlington, which was built by 1950 and hosted the series’ premier event until 1959, when Daytona International Speedway opened.

In the 1970s, NASCAR made many changes that contribute to the “Modern Era” of NASCAR that we see today. Winston came in as the series’ sponsor in 1971, a new points system was created, and more money was awarded to encourage points racing. By the mid ‘70s, NASCAR began to get some partial television coverage, which brought the sport to areas outside the southern United States.

But not until 1979 was there an entire race shown on television across America- the Daytona 500 was shown on CBS that year. Changes to the points and the purse won with the championship shifted driver focus from winning races to winning the championship.

There have been many advancements in the area of driver and crew safety in the years since then, and the cars no longer look “stock,” but major changes to the points system were not made until 2004, when the Chase For the Nextel Cup points system was put into place. With this format, only the top ten drivers in the points standings would be eligible for the championship and their points would be reset equal each other with ten races to go. This was done to create more excitement by avoiding runaway seasons where one driver dominates the entire year and wins the championship.

More changes were made to the Chase at the beginning of 2007, changing the number of eligible drivers to 12 and awarding each Chase contender ten bonus championship points for every points win they had earned in the year.