Stock car racing is a form of automobile racing found mainly in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Traditionally, races are run on oval tracks measuring approximately 0.25 to 2.66 miles (0.4 to 4.3 kilometers). NASCAR is the world's largest governing body for stock car racing, and its Sprint Cup Series (named for its sponsor, Sprint Nextel Corporation) is the de facto premier series of stock car racing. Top level races are 200 to 600 miles (322 to 966 km) in length.
Average speeds in the top classes are usually 70–80% of comparable levels of open wheel racing at the same tracks. Some stock cars may reach speeds in excess of 200 mph (322 km/h) at tracks such as Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway. These tracks have come to be known as "restrictor plate tracks", a name that is derived from the "restrictor plate," device that was designed to limit top speeds to approximately 192 mph (309 km/h) on such tracks.
Read more about Stock Car Racing: Stock Cars, The Early Years, The Golden Age, Stock Car Series, Stock Car Driver Career Paths, Stock Car Racing Compared To Other Forms of Motorsport
Famous quotes containing the words stock, car and/or racing:
“I’d rather I were dead and gone,
And my body laid in grave,
Ere a rusty stock o coal-black smith
My maidenhead should have.”
—Unknown. The Twa Magicians (l. 17–20)
“The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)