NASCAR, explained from the beginning

Stock car racing in the United States grew out of bootlegging. During Prohibition, drivers hauling moonshine out of the Appalachian hills needed small, fast cars that could outrun the police, and they modified ordinary production models to do it. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 took away some of that trade, but the South had developed a taste for untaxed whiskey, so the running continued, now with federal revenue agents in pursuit, and the cars kept getting quicker. Drivers who spent their weeknights outrunning the law started racing each other on weekends for pride. Into this world came Bill France Sr., a mechanic who moved from Washington, D.C., to Daytona Beach in 1935 to escape the Great Depression. He knew the area from the land speed record runs that had been staged on its hard sand, entered the 1936 Daytona beach race and finished fifth, and took over running the course in 1938. What France saw was a sport with willing drivers and paying spectators but no honest structure: promoters were known to leave with the gate money before the drivers were paid. He promoted a few races of his own before the Second World War and came out of it convinced that the answer was an organized body with published rules, a points fund and a national championship.

At the end of the 1947 season France called a meeting. On December 14, 1947, at one in the afternoon, 35 men gathered on the top floor of the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach for the first of four sessions in which France laid out his plan. The name, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, was proposed by mechanic Red Vogt. The organization was incorporated on February 21, 1948, and held its first event on the beach at Daytona on February 15 of that year, a modified race won by Red Byron, who went on to take the 1948 national title in that division.

• The original plan had three divisions: modified, roadster and strictly stock. The roadster class was dropped quickly; the modified class still runs today as the Whelen Modified Tour, NASCAR's oldest division.
• The strictly stock division was held back because Detroit could not build family sedans fast enough after the war. The 1948 schedule was 52 modified races on dirt.
• The first Strictly Stock race was run at Charlotte Speedway on June 19, 1949. Glenn Dunaway crossed the line first but was disqualified for altered rear springs, and Jim Roper was declared the winner. Red Byron was the first champion.
• That 1949 season was eight races on seven dirt ovals plus the beach-and-road course at Daytona. Martinsville is the only track from that schedule still on the calendar, which is one reason the fall 2000 Martinsville race in this archive matters as a link to the start.

The division was renamed Grand National for 1950, a name chosen to make the sport sound more professional, and it kept that name through 1970. Daytona International Speedway, the 2.5-mile oval that replaced the beach course, opened in 1959, and NASCAR's record books treat the 1949 Strictly Stock season as the first season of what is now Cup history.

In 1971 the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act banned cigarette advertising on American television. Tobacco companies had large advertising budgets and nowhere to spend them, and sponsoring sport was a way around the ban. R. J. Reynolds put its Winston brand on NASCAR's top division, which became the Winston Cup Grand National Series; the Grand National part was dropped in 1986, and the series raced as the Winston Cup Series through 2003. That is why every 2000 race on this site is described as a Winston Cup race: the name was the title sponsor of the day and nothing more. The two Wikipedia articles this page draws on differ slightly on the start, one saying the sponsorship began in 1971 and the other placing the first title sponsor in 1972, so take the first Winston-branded season as 1971 or 1972 depending on the source.

The money changed the sport. The schedule was cut from 48 races a year to 31, dirt tracks and ovals shorter than 250 miles were moved off to a short-lived Grand National East series, and every remaining race carried a purse of at least $30,000. Those changes are why 1972 is counted as the first year of NASCAR's modern era, which makes 2000 the 29th modern-era season. Bill France Sr. handed control to his eldest son, Bill France Jr., and in August 1974 France Jr. asked series publicist Bob Latford to design a points system that paid the same for every race regardless of length or prize money. The Latford system ran unchanged from 1975 until 2004, and it explains the 2000 standings, where Ricky Rudd finished fifth without a win and Tony Stewart finished sixth with six.

Winston was a cigarette. The Cup was a series. For 33 seasons the two names were welded together.

The top division has changed its name with each title sponsor. The table gives the periods as the Wikipedia article on the Cup Series records them.

During the 2002 season R. J. Reynolds told NASCAR it would end the sponsorship early, after 2003; the 1998 tobacco settlement had already made cigarette sponsorship of sport awkward. Nextel, a telecommunications company, signed on for 2004 and the series became the Nextel Cup. The same year NASCAR introduced the Chase for the Cup, a playoff in which the ten highest-scoring drivers after 26 races had their points reset and settled the title over the last ten races. The stated aim was a closer points race late in the year, and, less directly, better television ratings once the NFL season started. The Chase was reworked more than once; from 2014 it took 16 drivers and cut four after every three races until four remained to race for the title at the finale. When Sprint and Nextel merged in 2006 the series became the Sprint Cup from 2008, with a silver Tiffany trophy. Sprint left after 2016, Monster Energy took over for 2017 through 2019, and from 2020 the division has run as the NASCAR Cup Series with a group of partners rather than one name on the front. A charter system, introduced in 2016, guarantees 36 teams a place in all 36 races. The cars have changed as much as the names: the seventh-generation Next Gen car arrived in 2022, and fuel injection replaced carburetors in 2012 after 62 years.

NASCAR remains a privately held company based in Daytona Beach, Florida, with Jim France as chairman. It sanctions more than 1,500 races a year at more than 100 tracks in 48 states, and it runs series in Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Europe. Three national series form the ladder: the Cup Series at the top, the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series second and the Craftsman Truck Series third, with regional and developmental series below. Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota field cars in each of the three. The Cup schedule is 36 races, with the Daytona 500 as the biggest single event; the regular season is the first 26 races, after which 16 drivers are seeded for a ten-race playoff. Three drivers share the record of seven Cup championships: Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson. Every champion since Red Byron in 1949 has been American. If you go on from here to the 2000 season page, keep one thing in mind: the sport described there had a single season-long points table, no playoff, no stage points and a cigarette brand's name on the trophy. The racing looked much the same. The bookkeeping did not.