The Guest Post: When NASCAR comes to New York, the weekend starts on Wednesday

By Andrew Giangola –

A taxi tycoon is backing the NASCAR team of racing icon Richard Petty and has designs on bringing a major racetrack to Brooklyn or Queens.

It makes perfect sense.

Andrew Murstein’s family made a fortune in the yellow cab business, providing keen perspective on the possibilities of NASCAR in the Big Apple. New Yorkers take cabs. We’re all familiar with white-knuckled, tire-screeching, careening rides around corners at a dangerous yet thrilling rate of speed.

For those who may believe that NASCAR – a sport born from bootleggers hauling their whiskey through the winding roads of Appalachia – is strictly a southern delicacy, consider this. A large number of New Yorkers follow NASCAR. Maybe they’re in the closet. Maybe on Sundays they’re ensconced in an underground TV den. But they’re here.

According to Nielsen, in 2010 New York was the second-largest NASCAR market for network broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races. Outside of Atlanta, there are more people watching NASCAR races here than anywhere else in the U.S.

Another stat: according to independent research, there are 950,000 New York Times readers who consider themselves NASCAR fans.

One of those fans, super chef Mario Batali, is featured in my new book, The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans. Mario’s been to dozens of NASCAR races. He likes to canvas the campgrounds, sampling fans’ creative (and surprisingly high-quailty) cooking. He’s attracted to the mega-events – full of pomp and pageantry, patriotic and brawny, drawing more than 100,000 people on average.

Think about that. The average NASCAR race – there are 38 from February through November – is likely bigger than any sporting event you’ve ever attended.

“NASCAR races are like the Super Bowl meets Woodstock meets the Iowa State Fair,” Batali said. It’s a great line, mostly because it’s true. If you’ve ever been to a humming Jets or Giants tailgate at the Meadowlands, imagine that party starting mid-week. In NASCAR, the fans begin arriving on Wednesday, hence the new book’s title. Although, one fan in Michigan, Norma Horner, pulled me aside and lectured, “You’ve got it all wrong. The weekend starts on Monday!” (She and her husband got to the track on Monday, set up a tikki bar in the infield, held court for the better part of seven days, watched the race on Sunday, and packed up the Monday after.)

For Norma, and hundreds of thousands of others, NASCAR races represent the family vacation. The track is Disney World and the Grand Canyon and the Pyramids and the Roman Coliseum wrapped into one memorable trip where new friendships are made, old ones rekindled, and a pretty good race breaks out.

Even in a crowded, harried town with more than a dozen professional sports franchises, I agree with the Andrew Murstein. There is room for that kind of entertainment experience. I could spew more stats proving the sport’s appeal. But understanding the size, scope and appeal of NASCAR is better told anecdotally.

Right now, those of us in NASCAR (I’m in PR based in the sport’s Park Ave. office) are enjoying a brief offseason. One year during this all-too-short break, my family went skiing at Killington, Vt., where I took a flailing, out-of-control, agony-of-defeat cartwheel.

NASCAR drivers see crashes happening in slow motion. None of that here. It was an instantaneous, oh-snap blur, white canvas screaming toward my face. Greg Louganis couldn’t have hit the surface at a more precise 90-degree angle. It sounds like chomping a mouthful of Cap’n Crunch. I bounce like a Super Ball. On the second revolution, my head smacks the rock-hard mountain like a bowling ball dropped from a roof. Finally, silence.

It is a sad reflection of our YouTube culture that laying there, thankfully breathing (albeit stunned) and pleased my skull was not split like a rotten pumpkin, I wonder if anyone on the chair lift captured my spastic circus-act flop. Please tell me no one camera-phoned this. I’m destined to be an internet laughing stock. Without royalties.

That initial crunch wasn’t the give of snow. It something in my shoulder breaking.

The mountain is quiet, save my gasping. I lean on my good shoulder and crawl, inches at a time, across the mountain, toward the woods. Isn’t that where animals go to die? Someone, it’s a ski instructor, is waving his poles and shouting down from the lift. “Do you need me to radio for help?”

Up there, I’ve looked down at the meek humiliation of the daring and the clumsy, those unfortunate injured skiers carted away on the Red Cross sled. Yeah, call it in. Now I’ll know how it feels to be present for your own funeral procession. Like driving a stock car at Pocono Raceway, which had different ending of hearty slaps on the back and a framed photo on fake marble, I’ll check off another bucket-list experience.

The doctor examining me says he’ll take x-rays but it looks like a broken collar bone. “What do you do for a living?” he asks, not that interested.

“I’m with NASCAR,” I tell him.

He smiles, makes eye contact for the first time, and asks if Jimmie Johnson is going to win another championship.

In the mirror, I basically have no right shoulder. The disappearance of a frequently used body part is sickening. My arm is dangling low like an ape’s, the shoulder having apparently said, hasta la vista. The surrounding skin is already yellowish green. I want to puke.

“This looks pretty bad. Do I need surgery?”

“I don’t think so,” he says. “I want to know this. Earnhardt moving to Hendrick: is that going to change the competitive balance in the sport? I mean, Dale Jr., Gordon, Johnson – that’s like a Murderers Row or the Purple People Eaters. What a lineup! They’re gonna dominate!”

I’m in starting to shiver, slipping into shock maybe. The dull pain is starting to spread to my chest. I’m wondering if they’ll screw rods into my body like some of the old-school drivers I’ve met. I’ll be limping around like the Hunchback of NASCAR in New York.

“Do I have to stay in the hospital?” I ask.

“We’ll fix you up here, and you’ll be out in just a few. There’s quite a separation in the bone break. You must have hit pretty hard. Hey, I’ve seen some hard hits in your sport this year. I couldn’t believe Gordon walked away from that lick in Pocono. How about those HANS devices and new softer walls? They’re really making NASCAR much safer.”

“This hurts a lot. How long will the pain last?”

“Oh, it’s like any bone break,” the doctor says. “We’ll give you strong medication. Did you know Dale Senior broke his collarbone at Talladega, the car just flipping like crazy, then he drove the next week with that broken collarbone?”

“Yes, he actually won the pole and the race. Watkins Glen. Road course. Toughest course to drive, I’d imagine, with a painful injury like that. Doctor, I’m on the first day of a five-day vacation. Do I have to go home? We can get back to New York in about five hours.”

“It’s up to you. Frankly, you’ll at first be uncomfortable wherever you are. You can stay in the lodge. Hey, speaking of New York, that track NASCAR was building is not going to happen?”

This dance goes on until I get a sling and bottle of horse pills.

Several months later, I back was in tip-top shape; but then gruesomely rolled an ankle at Texas Motor Speedway. Back in New York, you can guess what happens when the doctor hears I fell at a NASCAR race. The orthopedic surgeon at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village secretly wishes he were Tony Stewart’s jack man:

Clumsy PR Guy: So, it’s broken. Bummer. But there’s no ligament damage, right?

Doctor: No, none. What amazes me is how fast those drivers go when they are so close to one another. Extraordinary, isn’t it.

Clumsy PR Guy: What about the tendons?

Doctor: The tendons are fine. You don’t have to worry about that. They say it’s the roar of the cars and the whole massive feel of it. You go to a race, and you are just blown away and hooked.

Clumsy PR Guy: I have been elevating the leg and keeping ice on the ankle. How long should I do that?

Doctor: As long as needed. I hear NASCAR is still looking at building a track in the New York area. Jersey? Near the Meadowlands? Out on the Island? No, no, Staten Island. Yes, that’s it. Is it true? That would be great. That sport really needs to be here in New York.

Clumsy PR Guy: Unfortunately, there’s not enough political support, and that’s not gonna work out. Listen, getting back to me and the ankle, I imagine there’s some sort of physical therapy ahead?

Doctor: You will absolutely need rehab. We can make a recommendation – plenty of good places. It really seems to be a sport that has caught on like wildfire. I have a friend at ABC, who was a big skeptic but is now completely sold on it. They show your races, right?

Clumsy PR Guy: Yes, ESPN/ABC is a partner, and NASCAR is very popular. I sit at a computer all day. My main exercise is hitting the send button on email. So I like to run at night. When will I be jogging again?

Doctor: Should be a few months. Just between you and me, it gets pretty wild at some of those tracks, huh? What’s it like?

Clumsy PR Guy: It’s fun. The fans are a panic. I’m writing a book on them. There’s a fan who took the NASCAR flag to the top of Mt. Everest. Another guy walks around at the track naked except for a Goodyear tire around his waist and a straw hat atop his head. Come to think of it, he walks a lot, and I’ll be doing the same at the track. I can do that with the cast you’ll give me? No crutches?

Doctor: Yes, of course. I don’t understand Staten Island. Why didn’t they just didn’t go buy the land at Grumman airport out on the Island? It’s totally available.

This is a top ankle and knee guy in New York magazine’s list of the city’s best doctors. He’s in demand and hard to reach. I was able to see him instantly. You see, his assistant is a Sprint phone-carrying NASCAR fan. She saw “NASCAR” on my email requesting an appointment. I was promptly slotted in.

Getting my first preference for follow up appointments was a snap. I just had to answer a few questions about what Dale Jr. was like, and does he really have a girlfriend?

Who says they don’t love NASCAR in New York?

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For more stories like these, Andrew Giangola’s critically acclaimed book, THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY, is available online and wherever fine books (and some crappy ones) are sold.