Bunch of cars, moving way to fast and too close to each other
CRASH
get wet
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Or “Software Development In The Real World!”
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@beschizza, I came hoping for a Lightning McQueen-style anthropomorphized shoop with creepy-real human eyes and teeth, and…I don’t want to leave disappointed. Please, please?
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This would have been a good year for Steven Bradbury to take up stock car racing.
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Eyes AND teeth?
Well yeah, if you created what we have today from scratch, as a spectator sport. But the first racers were moonshiners. The Wikipedia history section is… short on the early history, a section which might cause the most interest here.
In short, running moonshine meant out running cops in a car that wouldn’t draw immediate attention. So looked stock, but went fast. Naturally, they got raced. Someone organized some rules around that and it evolved from there. Some rules were meant to increase the ability to watch it, like tracks, or make it more exciting, like making sure the pack stays together…
I do not know of an instance in stock car racing, but I’ve heard of enough instances of a top level competitor in other sports doing so while drunk that I’m certain it has happened.
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From what I remember, Daytona is a restrictor plate race, meaning their top speed is limited. Meaning they all have to bunch up and draft each other. So aerodynamics means everything, from how fast you can go, to your fuel usage. And because they are so bunched up, when something goes wrong, it often goes wrong for a lot of people.
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I’ve always said it a bit more crude: “Physics is a bitch!”
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I think we’d get roughly the same entertainment value out of a bunch of souped up Roomba’s racing around in an oval ad nauseum
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Well, a brief clip on boingboing can’t capture all the behind the scenes drama… and singing!
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Physics is the opiate of the masses.
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Maybe, but chemists have solutions.
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They missed what happened after the crash
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/cracks open bud lite
yup.
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I wonder how many of the people who like to dunk on NASCAR also hate it when people use terms like “sportsball” to demean other sports?
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If top speed is limited, and assuming everyone can reach it, it must surely be less of a race and more - well, I dunno, like chess? Strategy, tactics, preparation, anticipating the opponents’ moves. Or “chess with random ‘luck’ dice throws” seeing as all those factors are added to by blind luck in the form of mechanical reliability, weather conditions and so on.
It’s not what I would call ‘racing’ though. But then again that weird cycling thing where they toodle around for several laps and then decide to have a sprint at some random point half a lap before the end is hardly what I’d call ‘racing’ either. I guess I’m old fashioned or just hard to please. Probably both, by definition.
I fully agree, but to give it the real-world human interest it demands, it needs to be roombas ridden by cats.
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Yeah ok, but racing isn’t a sport
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I went to the Fort Worth 500 the first time they had it, and something like this (not nearly as many cars) happened right after the 1st or 2nd lap. There was a banked curve that they had trouble drying (spring rains), and up until the start of the race they had people walking around blowing compressed air on the pavement. And that’s precisely where the crash happened.
Some of the cars finished the race with (for example) the hood and fenders missing. They’d go ahead and finish because it’s better to get a few points than none at all. But as previously mentioned, aerodynamics are everything, and it was obvious those cars were suffering with no body panels. They (NASCAR) will also do things like put a right-angled spoiler on the back if a particular body style has too much aerodynamic advantage.
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I agree! I watched the entire race and can’t recall any of it.
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