WHEELS: A Season on Nascar's Winston Cup Circuit - Hardcover

Hemphill, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684830175 ISBN 13: 9780684830179

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1997

Synopsis

Focuses on the drama of the 1996 thirty-one-race season as forty-five-year-old Dale Earnhardt aimed to break the legendary Richard Petty's record for championship seasons, while the upstart twenty-four-year-old Jeff Gordon sought to beat Earnhardt and earn his first championship. 35,000 first printing.

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Reviews

Hemphill (Leaving Birmingham, 1993) does his homework, leaving almost no stone unturned in this intriguing look at the 1996 season on the NASCAR stock--car circuit. Once a southern phenomenon comprised of hot-rodding moonshiners and good ol' boys with names like Buck and Fireball tearing up the local dirt ovals, stock-car racing, under the banner of NASCAR (the National Association of Stock Car Automobile Racing) has become a huge sports marketing enterprise. While this transformation has helped to make NASCAR attractive to national audiences and international sponsors, many feel that the sport may be selling its soul to the highest (Yankee) bidder. With a mechanic's precision, Hemphill rummages under NASCAR's hood to see what makes it run. Beginning with February's Speedweeks, a two-week gearhead bacchanal leading up to the circuit's first stop, the Daytona 500, and climaxing with the NAPA 500 in mid-November, NASCAR's Winston Cup series (the classiest of the stock-car racing circuits, named for its cigarette-producing sponsor) visits large cities and small hamlets alike, unfolding its drama of (white) men-and-machines in front of crowds often numbering into the hundreds of thousands. Hemphill notes, however, that NASCAR is inching ever further from its roots: Tracks in smaller communities, such as North Wilkesboro, N.C., are giving way to huge superspeedways in St. Louis and Dallas; the driver/owner, once the foundation of the sport, is finding it increasingly hard to keep pace with the corporate-sponsored multi-car teams. The season-ending awards dinner is held in, of all places, New York City. Lest one think that all of this success is spoiling NASCAR, Hemphill indicates that, at least down on the track, the races are still a ``maddening, ear-piercing, thunderous affirmation of life as Bubba understood it.'' A fascinating slice-of-life profile of one of America's most popular, yet least appreciated, sporting spectacles. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) events attracted five million fans in 1995. Hemphill examines the sport's good-ol'-boy roots and traces how those origins have clashed with--or complemented--the modern milieu of million-dollar corporate sponsorships and image consciousness. Among the colorful individuals Hemphill profiles is Junior Johnson, who retired in 1995 after 43 years as a stock-car racer. Johnson (dubbed "the last American hero" by Tom Wolfe) discusses such changes in the sport as better safety equipment, increased camaraderie among drivers, and, of course, the lure of big money. From the first race of the 1995 season through the season-ending banquet at a posh Manhattan hotel, Hemphill re-creates the unique mix of danger, excitement, courage, and technology that draws participants and fans alike to stock-car racing. But as always in an account such as this, it's the people who matter, and car racing is rich in both character and characters. A fine examination of an increasingly popular sport. Wes Lukowsky

Stock-car racing is the fastest-growing U.S. spectator sport and has been the subject of several books in the last few years. Here, Hemphill (The Heart of the Game: The Education of a Minor-League Ballplayer, LJ 2/1/96) portrays the sport in the style of a novelist while reporting on the events of the 1996 racing season. The result makes good reading but provides little in the way of new information or even a new angle. Fry Gaillard's Kyle: At 200 mph (St. Martin's, 1993) and Peter Golenbock's American Zoom (LJ 7/93) both used first-person analysis to cover the subject. Hemphill's treatment of tobacco company sponsorship problems is informative and timely but, ultimately, this is a book for fans only. However, public libraries may find that they have many NASCAR fans among their patrons. For popular sports collections.?Eric C. Shoaf, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence, R.I.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684830175
• ISBN 13: 9780684830179
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352