That is, the NASCARGOT races, as a Bizarro of 12/26/10 has it, reveling in the portmanteau of NASCAR and escargot (French ‘snail’) and showing us Dan Piraro’s goofy conception of snails in a NASCAR race:
(#1) The cartoon appeared as the middle panel of a Bizarro Sunday Punnies strip with three bits of word play in it, posted about (without further analysis) in my 12/26/10 posting “Punnies #11” (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page)
Hat tip to Susan Fischer for dredging up this old cartoon on Facebook yesterday. Causing me to reflect on the fact that not all of my readers will be familiar with the American popcultural phenomenon that is NASCAR; there are people who wouldn’t be surprised to see that contestants in a race carry numbers, but would be baffled by all those ads on the snails’ shells. Indeed, DP has managed to transport the physical trappings of NASCAR vehicles to le monde des escargots. Motor sport meets malacology.
NASCAR. From Wikipedia:
(#2) The Air Force Ford-sponsored Wood Brothers No. 21 Ford Taurus, driven by Ricky Rudd, is shown here during a practice run on February 11th, 2000; he’s preparing for the Daytona 500 race, to be held on February 15th (from Wikipedia, a U.S. Air Force photo by Larry McTighe)The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. It is considered to be one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in the world and is one of the largest spectator sports in America. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and his son, Jim France, has been the CEO since August 2018. The company is headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida. Each year, NASCAR sanctions over 1,500 races at over 100 tracks in 48 US states, as well as in Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Europe.
Look at #2, and you’ll see where the logos on the cars in #1 — for Morton salt, STP motor oil, FedEx delivery services, and Gibson guitars — come from: NASCAR cars are, um, vehicles for commercial advertising (in #2, alongside Ford: Coors Light beer, UPS delivery services, Target stores, M&Ms candy, NBA basketball). The NASCAR scene nicely captured in the world of snails.
There’s a strong association between stock car racing and Southern white working-class masculinity; as a result, the Confederate flag was flown at races for many years, until it was officially prohibited in 2020. As another result, as an out gay man, raised in the Philadelphia / New York City culture zone, and a college professor (in the humanities / social sciences, to boot), I find the NASCAR milieu deeply hostile.
Motor racing as a sport. NASCAR races are certainly competitions, but is stock car racing, or indeed any sort of motor racing, a sport? It’s all a bit edgy, given a definition of sport like the one in NOAD:
noun sport: 1 [a] an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment: team sports such as baseball and soccer | (as modifier sports): a sports center …
There’s the physical exertion question and, more important, the question of the machine’s place in the competition. One consequence of these reservations is that motor racing (of any sort, even the more elite sports car racing) is not an official Olympic event.
Motor racing enthusiasts, however, took the matter of labels into their own hands by adopting the name motor-sport / motor sport / motorsport for their competitions (I don’t know the history in any detail; the first of two relevant entries in OED3 is from 1936, and neither is particularly informative). In any case, the term was widely adopted. So: there’s a Wikipedia entry that begins:
Motorsport(s) or motor sport(s) are sporting events, competitions and related activities that primarily involve the use of automobiles, motorcycles, motorboats and powered aircraft. For each of these vehicle types, the more specific terms automobile sport, motorcycle sport, power boating and air sports may be used commonly, or officially by organisers and governing bodies.
Different manifestations of motorsport with their own objectives and specific rules are called disciplines. Examples include circuit racing, rallying and trials. Governing bodies [AZ: like NASCAR], also called sanctioning bodies, often have general rules for each discipline, but allow supplementary rules to define the character of a particular competition, series or championship. Groups of these are often categorised informally, such as by vehicle type, surface type or propulsion method. Examples of categories within a discipline are formula racing, touring car racing, sports car racing, [stock car racing,] etc.
Associations are nevertheless sometimes made between motorsport and the Olympics, as in the name of the Olympic MotorSports shop in Boca Raton FL (“An automotive performance shop built for auto enthusiasts and professionals”), whose logo incorporates a laurel wreath symbolizing triumph, as awarded in the original Greek Olympic games:
(#3) The machine and the wreath
(There’s also an Olympic Powersports motorcycle parts store in Port Angeles WA, but it’s surely named after the Olympic Range of mountains in that part of the world, not the Olympic games.)