Days of Chunder

A NASCAR? On a track with actual corners? You better believe it. Time to teach those F1 boys how to make some noise.

- Jack Rix 

‘At the mere mention of nascar, most journalists will dive into a barrel of well-worn cliches’​ Cliches such as its fans are all Trump-worshipping, Coors-guzzling rednecks with Confederate flag tattoos. Or that the technology is so Stone Age, it makes a ride-on lawnmower look like VSS Unity. Or that the tracks are ovals because Americans can’t remember to turn right as well as left. But not me. Nope. I would never stoop that low. Especially as I’m currently sitting in the belly of the world’s angriest car, and everything has just become very serious indeed. The vibrations are making my eyeballs rattle around in their sockets, I’m uncomfortably hot, my head is throbbing and my nerves are frayed to the point that if there wasn’t netting covering the windows, I would happily paint some new graphics down the side of the car.

Not that I’m complaining, you understand. This is, without question, the most excited I’ve ever been while simultaneously contemplating my imminent and certain death. For this will be no sanitised ride-along. I shall have no sighter laps or tuition from the passenger seat. I’m being sent out on one of F1’s most undulating tracks in a NASCAR with little more than a slap on the back and a double thumbs-up. To be fair, having posted myself through the window with all the grace of a drunken baboon, there was a briefing on how to operate it. It went something like this: “Don’t worry about all those buttons. Flick that to turn it on, keep your eye on the water temperature and you can flat shift on the way up, but wait for the revs to fall on the way down.” And that’s it. The whole shebang. Ikea coffee tables have more instructions.