Budweiser is the official beer of NHRA and was the official beer of NASCAR until 2007.

To this day, Earnhardt is the only driver in NASCAR Winston Cup history to follow a Rookie of the Year title with a NASCAR Winston Cup Championship the next season.

A common misconception is that Richard Childress Racing " owns the rights " to the No. 3 in NASCAR competition ( fueled by the fact that Kevin Harvick's car has a little No. 3 as an homage to Earnhardt and the usage of the No. 3 on the Camping World Series truck of Ty Dillon ), but in fact no team owns the rights to this or any other number: However, according to established NASCAR procedures, RCR would have priority over other teams if and when the time came to reuse the number.

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.

* 1948 – NASCAR is incorporated.

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing ( NASCAR ) is a family-owned and-operated business venture that sanctions and governs multiple auto racing sports events.

As of 2009, the CEO for the company is Brian France, grandson of Bill France, Sr. NASCAR is the largest sanctioning body of stock car racing in the United States.

Parma is the birthplace of world-renowned ecologist and soil scientist Dr. Robert E. Horton and NASCAR driver Brian Tyler.

Richard Lee Petty ( born July 2, 1937 ) is a former NASCAR driver who raced in the Strictly Stock / Grand National Era and the NASCAR Winston Cup Series.

" The King ", as he is nicknamed, is most well known for winning the NASCAR Championship seven times ( Dale Earnhardt is the only other driver to accomplish this feat ), winning a record 200 races during his career, winning the Daytona 500 a record seven times, and winning a record 27 races ( ten of them consecutively ) in the 1967 season alone.

Petty is a member of the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

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

Split screens are frequently used in motor racing, especially during safety car pit stops in the IndyCar Series and NASCAR, where four way splits are used, most often with three leading cars or trucks ' pit stops shown on the left and a shot of the pit exit ( where restart order is determined after pit stops ) on the right, with some featuring just four different cars or trucks making pit stops.

* 1950 – Darlington Raceway is the site of the inaugural Southern 500, the first 500-mile NASCAR race.

NASCAR is the world's largest governing body for stock car racing, and its Sprint Cup Series ( named for its sponsor, Sprint Nextel Corporation ) is the de facto premier series of stock car racing.

In 1971, Earnhardt married his second wife, Brenda Gee ( the daughter of NASCAR car builder Robert Gee ), with whom he had a daughter, Kelley King, in 1972, and a son, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., in 1974.

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.

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.

Chrysler has produced three generations of such engines: the first ( the Chrysler FirePower engine ) in the 1950s, the second ( the 426 Hemi ), developed for NASCAR in 1964 and produced through the early 1970s, and finally the " new HEMI " in the early 2000s.

Waltrip is the winner of 84 Cup Series races, including seven consecutive wins at Bristol Motor Speedway, ( a record for any driver, all-time ), placing him second to Jeff Gordon for the most wins in the modern era of NASCAR, and tied with Bobby Allison for fourth on the all-time list.

Waltrip would compete in ten more races in the 1975 season for DiGard, sponsored by Terminal Transport, and get his second career NASCAR Winston Cup victory October 12, 1975, in the Capitol City 500, in.

In the United States, Supercross races today are the second most popular form of motorsport ( behind NASCAR racing ).

After finishing second and third in the Busch Series ( now Nationwide Series ), he moved up in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series ( later NEXTEL Cup Series and now Sprint Cup Series ).

On November 20, Stewart won his second NASCAR Nextel Cup Championship, joining Jeff Gordon as the only active, full-time drivers at the time to have won multiple championships.

" Entering the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup portion of the schedule winless, Stewart won the opening race of the Chase at the Chicagoland Speedway and jumped up seven spots in the points, securing second place and extending his streak of consecutive years with a win to 13.

On November 20, 2011, Stewart won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship by winning the final race at Homestead-Miami Speedway while Edwards finished second.

To save teams money by not requiring teams to hire pit specialists and buy extra tires, and because some tracks – Saugus Speedway, Flemington Raceway, Tucson Raceway Park, Evergreen Speedway and Colorado National Speedway most notably — did not have a pit road safe enough for pit stops, or had pits outside the track, starting with the second race of the series in Tucson, AZ, NASCAR adopted a ten-minute " halftime " break, in place of pit stops, where teams could make any changes they would want to the truck.

Wallace in the # 2 ( background ) in 1985Wallace finished second in his first NASCAR race at Atlanta 500 in 1980, having started 7th, driving for Roger Penske in the # 16.

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.

He was a brother to NASCAR's second female driver Ethel Mobley and NASCAR pioneers Bob Flock and Fonty Flock.

Occoneechee Speedway was the second NASCAR track to ever open.

Lights were added to the speedway in 2004 with the addition of a second annual NASCAR weekend.

Later that year NASCAR announced a second annual Sprint Cup Series race at the track for the 2004 season, with the second race being run “ under the lights ”.

This big, powerful engine in such a light car gave the Golden Hawk a phenomenal power-to-weight ratio ( and thus performance ) for the time ; of 1956 American production cars, the Golden Hawk was second only to Chrysler's 300 B by that measure — and the expensive Chrysler was a road-legal NASCAR racing car.

AUSCAR was also the name used for the second tier racing category that raced alongside the Australian NASCAR stock car racing series, starting in 1986 and continuing until 2001.

NASCAR eliminated second round qualifying beginning in 2001 and the Shootout Qualifier was eliminated.

Overall, Martin has 40 career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series wins and has finished second in the Sprint Cup Series point standings five times ( 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2009 ).

Ralph won his one and only NASCAR Sportsman Championship in 1956 at Greenville Pickens Speedway in Greenville, South Carolina.

Normally used an entry level formula, it has grown into a stand alone series, with National, State and Club events and Championships. The first NASCAR " Strictly Stock " race ever was held at Charlotte Speedway, on June 19, 1949. Where a racing class requires that the cars raced be production vehicles only slightly adapted for racing, manufacturers typically produce a limited run of such vehicles for public sale so that they can legitimately race them in the class.

For NASCAR Grand National winners at Daytona from 1949 – 1958, see Daytona Beach & Road Course. Mario Andretti, born in Italy, is the only driver to win the race not from the United States.

As a result, starting with the 2011 season, NASCAR implemented a rule that stated that a driver could only race for the drivers ' championship in one of three national series ( Sprint Cup, Nationwide, and Camping World Truck ) of the drivers ' choosing.

Foyt only needed ten races to get his first NASCAR victory.

He is one of only two drivers to win races in Formula One, IndyCar, World Sportscar Championship and NASCAR ( the other being Dan Gurney ).

To date, he remains the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500 ( 1969 ), Daytona 500 ( 1967 ) and the Formula One World Championship, and, along with Juan Pablo Montoya, the only driver to have won a race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Formula One, and an Indianapolis 500.

NASCAR only required 500 copies to be built in 1969, but in 1970, NASCAR required a manufacturer to build one unit per dealer.

Not only did the ride improve, but handling also got a boost, and this system was used for NASCAR in the full-size class.

It never saw a NASCAR track or a showroom and only three prototype cars were produced.

In 1967 Connie Kalitta's SOHC-powered " Bounty Hunter " won Top Fuel honors at AHRA, NHRA and NASCAR winter meets, becoming the only " triple crown " winner in drag racing history.

Since the term three-peat came into usage, however, only one team in major American sports has been able to achieve it-Hendrick Racing / Jimmie Johnson NASCAR team, who won 5 championships in a row.

In 1994, William Grimes noted in the New York Times that RAA only took on non-profit commissions, however their position has changed in recent years as the firm has completed some corporate work, including the NASCAR Hall of Fame and the Corning Museum of Glass.

On July 14, 2011, it was announced that Waltrip, in only his third year of eligibility, will be inducted as one of the five members of the class of 2012, one of only nine top series Nascar drivers to be inducted to the NASCAR Hall of Fame thus far.

During the early years of Waltrip's career, his wife, Stevie Waltrip, was the first NASCAR wife to attend the races and sit in the pit box, something almost all wives now do not only in NASCAR, but Formula 1, Indy Car, and most other forms of professional racing.

Waltrip won only one NASCAR Winston Cup race in 1976, the Virginia 500, at Martinsville Speedway in, but in 1977 and 1978, working with legendary Nascar crew chief Buddy Parrott, he won six times each year, including his first of four career victories at the Talladega Superspeedway, in Talladega, AL, on May 1, 1977, and his first of a record five career victories in the series ' longest race, the Coca-Cola 600 ( formerly the World 600 ), May 28, 1978.

The final margin of Petty's Championship victory over Waltrip was only 11 points, the third-closest points race in NASCAR Winston Cup history.