This striking volume examines not only the physical aspects needed to be a race car driver, but also how the driver and the car work together. Author Barbara Sheen talks about not only the physical and mental demands a driver endures while racing, but also the mechanics of the car and what types of science are used to evaluate both the car and the driver.

The exciting world of sports car racing is covered in this book, an age-appropriate look at a motorsport that’s gaining popularity all over the world. Readers will learn about Grand Touring models, touring models, and prototypes, and how each kind of sports car brings something unique to the sport. The body text, “Fast Fact” fact boxes, and sidebars cover the history of the sport, its rules, action in the pit crew, famous drivers, exciting racing, and how readers can start to participate. The text concludes with a graphic organizer of the flags seen at sports car racing events.

The first organized, sanctioned American stock car race took place in 1908 on a road course around Briarcliff, New York--staged by one of America's early speed mavens, William K. Vanderbilt, Jr. A veteran of the early Ormond-Daytona Beach speed trials, Vanderbilt brought the Grand Prize races to Savannah, Georgia, the same year. What began as a rich man's sport eventually became the working man's sport, finding a home in the South with the infusion of moonshiners and their souped-up cars. Based in large part on statements of drivers, car owners and others garnered from archived newspaper articles, this history details the development of stock car racing into a megasport, chronicling each season through 1974. It examines the National Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing's 1948 incorporation documents and how they differ from the agreements adopted at NASCAR's organization meeting two months earlier. The meeting's participants soon realized that their sport was actually owned by William H.G. "Bill" France, and its consequential growth turned his family into billionaires. The book traces the transition from dirt to asphalt to superspeedways, the painfully slow advance of safety measures and the shadowy economics of the sport.

This two-volume encyclopedia is the Daytona 500 of stock car racing books—an essential "Bible" that provides an all-encompassing history of the sport as well as an up-to-date examination of modern-day stock car racing. How did stock car racing become firmly entrenched in American pop culture, especially in light of the lack of interest in motorsports overall as a spectator activity in the United States? And what has been the secret to NASCAR's financial success and growth over the last six decades? Encyclopedia of Stock Car Racing highlights approximately 250 subjects that have defined the sport since stock car racing was first organized. Organized in A-Z order, it covers all of the greatest drivers, such as Richard Petty, Jimmie Johnson, Junior Johnson, and David Pearson; the special races such as the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400; and the famed tracks across the country, from Bristol Motor Speedway to Darlington Raceway to Talladega Superspeedway. This unprecedented resource collects information about every element of NASCAR history in one place: the early personalities who shaped the sport and set things in motion, the past greats who have now retired, and today's rising stars who continue to make stock car racing one of the most popular sports in the United States.

Sports cars are sleek beasts of power and speed, but when happens when a race goes awry? Learn the details on some of the most intense moments in sports car racing.

Robert Schleicher wrote the book on slot car racing—literally. In the three short years since Schleicher’s Slot Car Racing: Tips, Tricks & Track Plans was published, the hobby has been virtually transformed by new products and technologies. This new volume, a perfect complement to its predecessor, brings readers and racers up to date, offering a concise, comprehensive overview of slot car racing’s developments, along with expert, practical guidance for putting this information to good use. A primer on the latest digital and analog developments for both 1/32 and HO scales, Schleicher’s book delivers the lowdown on building cars from individual components on ready-to-race chassis, as well as popular tune-up tips to get even more speed and better handling out of today’s cars. Schleicher also provides track tests of 70 cars and a slot-car shootout featuring 23 more vehicles. Finally, Schleicher includes nearly 50 track plans: 14 tabletop-size plans for Scalextric, Classic, Carrera, Sport, SCX, and Ninco brand track; 14 plans modeled on real circuits like Watkins Glen, Monaco, Spa-Francorchamps, Sears Point, and the Bahrain and Shanghai F1 courses; and 17 4x8-foot HO scale plans. Illustrated throughout with color photography and track plan line art, this is the book that no serious slot car racer can afford to be without.

Stock cars are built for bumper-to-bumper high-speed racing. Just a slight loss of control can mean big damage during a stock car race. Learn the details of some of the most intense moments in stock car racing.

This book is dedicated to the man whose life inspired me to tell his story. His name is D. Anthony Venditti, widely known as the Godfather of Stock Car Racing in New England. It is also dedicated to my mother, with her eternal love and devoted support of her beloved Anthony, her family, and racing. She and the Godfather enabled and empowered our family to persevere in the sport. This is to all those with unending convictions in the Godfather and to the Seekonk Fraternity of racing. This book is a pictorial and a closer look at the life of the Godfather. He was the youngest promoter in motor sports in the United States in the 1940s. And as a twenty-five-year-old, he planned, engineered, and built his speedway. He was young and full of ambition. It was his dream, an American dream, to build, open, and operate his speedway at the end of World War II, in 1946. Yet when in his advanced years, he then became known as the oldest living promoter in stock car racing. He consecutively ran his race plant each year, faithfully opening his facility, without fail. He never missed a season under his reign—an unheard-of feat of forty-five years as a stock car racing promoter. Seekonk Speedway continues to run without any ambiguity by the same family. The speedway is proudly still in business all these seventy-three consecutive years of racing in the books. Anthony is celebrated and acclaimed for his pioneering in the American sport of auto racing, awarded RPM’s “1978 Promoter of the Year.” It was with great adoration of the sports community that he is acknowledged for his forethought and far-reaching ideas of innovation pertaining to mechanical engineering, safety features in facility construction, and administrative procedures. Mr. Venditti is attributed to numerous awards for his devotion for the betterment of the sport of auto racing.

Bowling Green became the city of speed immediately after World War II as America began its love affair with the automobile. Stock car racing took the city by storm in its inaugural season of 1951, drawing crowds of up to 7,000 in a city of only 18,000. Soon thereafter, the city attracted the Chevrolet Corvette assembly plant followed by the National Corvette Museum. Images of Sports: Bowling Green Stock Car Racing documents the history of stock car racing in Bowling Green and the emergence of the raceway at Beech Bend Park. Larry Upton is a bank executive in Gilbert, Arizona. He has written for the Journal of Commercial Bank Lending and the Journal of Arizona History. Jonathan Jeffrey, special collections librarian at Western Kentucky University's Kentucky Library, has written a number of books about the city's heritage. Many of the images used in this book came from the collection of Marshall Love Jr.

On Labor Day weekend of 1972, journalist Jerry Bledsoe hooked up with the stock car racing circuit to begin research for his first book. The result of his efforts, first published in 1975, has been called the classic work on stock car racing. Bledsoe captures the beginnings of the modern NASCAR era, a time when legends like Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, and the Wood brothers ruled. It was also a time when independent drivers like Wendell Scott (NASCAR’s first African American driver) and Larry Smith could build a car in their garages during the week and race on Sunday alongside King Richard. With levels of access impossible to achieve today, Bledsoe is not only in the pits and garages with the drivers, but also is alongside their family driving to the next race in a van piled high with ice chests filled with sandwiches and fried chicken. He digs into the sport’s rough and rowdy history and shines a light into its nooks and crannies, uncovering the forgotten role that women drivers played in creating this most macho of motorsports. And then there are the fans. There’s Red Robinson, the self-proclaimed “World’s Number One Stock Car Racing Fan," who collects racing beauty queens the way some people collects stamps. And the fans camped out in the infield at Darlington, the biggest, wildest, whoopingest, holleringest, drinkingest, gamblingest, carousingest, knock-down, fall-out blowout held in the South. More than a book about racing, this is a close-up look at a cultural phenomenon that illuminates America and the South. In 1965, Tom Wolfe called racer Junior Johnson “the last American hero.” “The World’s Number One, All-Time Great, Stock Car Racing Book” shows that a decade later there were still plenty of heroes circling the track with no signs of them disappearing anytime soon.