It also oversees NASCAR Local Racing, the Whelen Modified Tour, the Whelen All-American Series, and the NASCAR iRacing. com Series.

His father, Lee Petty, won the first Daytona 500 in 1959 and was also a 3 time NASCAR champion.

Richard's son, Kyle Petty, is also a well-known NASCAR driver.

Petty was born in Level Cross, North Carolina, the son of Elizabeth ( née Toomes ) and Lee Arnold Petty, also a NASCAR driver and the older brother of Maurice Petty.

NASCAR also operates the Nationwide Series, a stock car junior league, and the Camping World Truck Series, a junior league where pickup trucks are raced.

Applications requiring its high density include weights, counterweights, ballast keels for yachts, tail ballast for commercial aircraft, and as ballast in race cars for NASCAR and Formula One ; depleted uranium is also used for these purposes, due to similarly high density.

* Winston Million, also called the Grand Slam, a cash prize award program on the NASCAR Winston Cup series

Sports programming is also provided, usually on weekends ( albeit not every weekend year-round ), and most commonly between 12 – 4 or 12-8 p. m. on Sundays ( during football season, slightly less during NASCAR season ) and 3: 30 – 7 p. m. on Saturday afternoons ( during baseball season ).

In the early days of NASCAR, stock cars were in fact built from production cars, whereas some current touring car series are also raced in silhouette racing cars.

Many NASCAR drivers also got their start in racing from karts, such as Darrell Waltrip, Danica Patrick, Lake Speed, Ricky Rudd, Juan Pablo Montoya, Tony Stewart, and Jeff Gordon.

Villeneuve also had two starts in the 2009 NASCAR Nationwide Series, both for Braun Racing, with his best performance starting 6th and finishing 4th at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, again under wet conditions and the second time rain tires were used in a NASCAR event.

The series is composed of road courses and stockcars similar to NASCAR and Villeneuve said " On a personal level, Speedcar will give me more road racing experience with this kind of cars which will be useful in future NASCAR road course events and it's also a great excuse to meet race fans.

More recently, the online subscription-based simulation iRacing, also designed by Kaemmer and built on the NASCAR Racing 2003 Season code base.

Chesterfield County is also noted as the home town of NASCAR superstar Denny Hamlin.

In line with the nation, NASCAR also enjoys popularity in Mifflin County.

Stuntman and NASCAR driver Stanton Barrett also calls Bishop home.

* Tony Stewart Current NASCAR driver, former IRL Champion is also referred to as the " Rushville Rocket ".

Loudon is home to the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, which in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is home to the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 and the Sylvania 300, in the NASCAR Nationwide Series the New England 200, in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series the Sylvania 150, and is also home to the Loudon Classic, America's Oldest Motorcycle Race.

His brother, Ryan Truex ( born 1992 ), also competes in NASCAR.

When NASCAR was first formed by Bill France, Sr. in 1948 to regulate stock car racing in the U. S., there was a requirement that any car entered be made entirely of parts available to the general public through automobile dealers.

In addition, R. J. Reynolds ( the tobacco conglomerate ) took over as the major sponsor of NASCAR racing ( changing the name to the " Winston Cup ") and they made a significantly larger financial contribution than previous sponsors.

However, the network was eventually sold to News Corporation, which made it NASCAR-centric, and has since replaced the sports car related programming with either NASCAR programming ( in 2009, NASCAR purchased the Grand American Road Racing Association, which is an independent subsidiary ) or reality shows.

He made his NASCAR Nextel Cup race debut in the UAW-Ford 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama over the weekend of 5 – 7 October 2007.

Brian France explained why NASCAR made the changes to the chase:

This made him the first foreign-born driver to have multiple wins in NASCAR Sprint Cup history.

Along with rallying, Räikkönen has turned his attention towards NASCAR, and made his debut for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Camping World Truck Series.

He also made four NASCAR Grand National ( now Sprint Cup Series ) starts from 1969 to 1977 with a best finish of second in 1970 at Riverside International Raceway.

This limited edition car was made specifically with NASCAR racing in mind and all of its modifications were to improve the aerodynamics of the Torino.

In May 2011 he made statements about NASCAR, calling it boring and stating “ I can ’ t watch a NASCAR race on TV without taking a three-hour nap in the middle of it ... It is a different scene and a different culture.

Hudson's strong, light-weight bodies, combined with its high-torque inline six-cylinder engine technology made the company's 1951 – 54 Hornet an auto racing champion, dominating NASCAR in 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954.

McCollum made headlines in February 2011 when she voted to end military sponsorship of NASCAR teams.

In 1996, Tony made his NASCAR Busch Series debut, driving for car owner Harry Rainer.

NASCAR declared that Smith had made an illegal pass under the yellow line, and awarded the victory to Stewart.

Most of the first drivers in the series were veteran short track drivers who hadn't made it into the other NASCAR national series.

Prior to joining the NASCAR circuit, Wallace made a name for himself racing around the Midwest in the late 1970s by winning a pair of local track championships.

He made nine further NASCAR appearances over the next three years, although he did not score any further top 10 finishes until he went full-time in 1984.

He had already won the second race of the season Feb 28th 1993 at North Carolina Motor Speedway but also a sad one as his friend and reigning NASCAR Champion Alan Kulwicki was killed flying into Bristol Speedway in April 1993, because of this Rusty won the race at Bristol and in respect to Alan Kulwicki he did a " Polish victory lap "— turning his car around and driving around the track the wrong way, as made famous by Kulwicki.

The character has made appearances at state fairs, NASCAR Races, children's events, and cook-offs.

However, including that race, Geoff Bodine only made 18 starts in the NASCAR Winston / Nextel / Sprint cup Series between 2001 and 2004, with only one top five and two top 10s, both in 2002.

Three months later NASCAR President Bill France, Jr. agreed to sanction Winston Cup Series races at the speedway upon completion, marking the first time NASCAR has made a commitment to run a race at a track that had yet to be built.

It is generally believed that current NASCAR owners have agreed never to use the No. 3 in Sprint Cup competition again, although this is not official NASCAR policy.

Ford started to sell " cammers " to the public to homologate it ( mostly to dealer-sponsored privateer drag racers ), but NASCAR changed the rules to specify that all NASCAR engines must use a single cam-in-block.

The race started off in the sun, but before halfway, it began to rain and the teams were told to pit and use rain-tires, for the first time in NASCAR.

In 1989, NASCAR changed rules requiring cars to use current body styles, similar to the Sprint Cup cars.

NASCAR had developed rain tires for road course racing in both series, but never had to use them in race conditions.

Prior to the use of the Toyota Tundra silhouette in the Craftsman Truck Series, MG was reported as the last foreign brand to be used in NASCAR.

* The New York Daily News reported on December 14, 2010, that Andrew Murstein was considering a proposal to use the field as a possible site for a NASCAR track.

Beginning in 1958, Earl W. Meyer at Chrysler worked on EI, continuing until 1961 and resulting in use of EI on the company's NASCAR hemis in 1963 and 1964.

Adam's death, along with 1998 Winston Cup Rookie of the Year Kenny Irwin, Jr .' s at the same track ( on July 7, 2000 ) led NASCAR to mandate the use of a kill switch on the steering wheel and the adoption of the Whelen Modified Tour restrictor plate for the September Cup race ; the plate was abandoned after that race.

* many NASCAR races often use the number 500 at the end of their race names ( i. e. Daytona 500 ), to denote the length of the race ( in miles, kilometers or laps ).

In April 2012, Clutch's record label, Weathermaker Music, publicized that Fox Sports had been licensed to use Clutch's song " The Regulator " during its 2012 NASCAR and MLB seasons.

Unlike NASCAR, which mandates the use of steel-bodied shells, CASCAR-approved cars consisted of fiberglass bodyshells covering custom-made tube-frame racing chassis.

The NASCAR circuit has two tracks, the longer Talladega Superspeedway and Daytona International Speedway, that were once faster than Atlanta, with lap speeds usually exceeding 200 mph ( 322 km / h ), but restrictor plates were mandated for use on those tracks in 1988 after Bobby Allison's violent crash at Talladega the year before, reducing average lap speeds to about 190 mph ( 306 km / h ).

The track also hosts Speed Tech Driving School, which allows individuals to race 6 or more laps on the track when it is not in use for NASCAR or other events.

NASCAR imposed rule changes to slow the cars after the incident, with a 1988 rule requiring cars running there and at Daytona to use restrictor plates.

They are still in use with the 2012 season introduction of McLaren Electronics engine control unit providing electronic engine management for all NASCAR races and cars with carburetors finally being phased out.

Following testing and input from drivers such as David Pearson, Bobby Isaac, and Bobby Allison, NASCAR mandated the use of a restrictor plate.

Combined with the aerodynamic disadvantage of the trucks, this allowed NASCAR to avoid the use of such equipment for the trucks until 2008.

Both these NASCAR series now use a restrictor plate and tapered spacer at the two tracks.

NASCAR changed from a 4-cylinder to a V-6 motor in 1998, but still allowed teams to use either 4-or 6-cylinder engines from that point on.

For the 1978 NASCAR season, the 1974 Charger that Chrysler teams had continued to use was no longer eligible for competition.

Their use has historically been largely confined to NASCAR stock car racing, partially due to the much larger surface area of a stock car, and longer season, but have entered the IndyCar in a limited fashion.