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.

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.

At the time, it typically took three years for a new design of car body or engine to end up in production and be available for NASCAR racing.

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

The body also has differences between each manufacturer, but still within strict aerodynamic guidelines provided by NASCAR.

Dick Trickle's 1968 Torino NASCAR with the aerodynamic " Sportsroof " body

A new 2 + 2 model was offered for homologation of an Aerocoupé body for NASCAR competition, just as how Chevrolet as well released the Monte Carlo SS Aerocoupé in 1986.

Also, where NASCAR had strict rules concerning body shapes ( in order to maintain as much parity as possible among the approved models ), CASCAR's rules tended to be more lax.

Contrary to popular belief, foreign cars had competed in NASCAR competition in the early days of the sanctioning body ; indeed, a Jaguar won a NASCAR-sanctioned race in the Grand National division ( predecessor to the modern Sprint Cup Series ) at a road course in Linden, New Jersey in 1954, according to commentator Mike Joy, and the last foreign-made car to compete in a NASCAR-sanctioned event was an MG at one Grand National race in 1963 ( before Toyota entered the Nextel Cup Series at the beginning of the 2007 season.

This category contains articles that are related to the stock car racing sanctioning body NASCAR.

It was this restyled body that ( along with the Monte Carlo, Buick Regal, and Pontiac Gran Prix ) ushered in the down-sized cars into NASCAR cup competition.

This Cutlass body style proved to be a winner for NASCAR competition and it visited the victory circle 13 times between 1989 and 1992, when Olds ended its racing program.

In the 1968 NASCAR Grand National stock car season, the fastback Fairlane body style proved much slicker than other makes, but the nose of the Mercury Cyclone Fastback was the main reason pointed to it being even slightly faster than its Ford counterpart.

NASCAR wanted the cars to get to the halfway point to make the race official, so the sanctioning body had the drivers slowly circle the track.

For a NASCAR driver, Edwards spends a lot of time developing his body, as photos of his abdominal and pectoral muscles have shown.

The NASCAR Hall of Fame honors drivers who have shown exceptional skill at NASCAR driving, all-time great crew chiefs and owners, and other major contributors to competition within the sanctioning body.

During the prerace for the Samsung 500 NASCAR race at Texas in 2008, NASCAR driver Clint Bowyer and FOX analyst Jeff Hammond drove the Bounty Hunter truck ( which was actually the Scarlet Bandit truck with a different body ) for a feature segment of the show.

After a concrete patch only disintegrated again, NASCAR used Bondo body filler to patch the track with just 40 laps remaining.

The Fusion also became the new body style for Ford automobiles in NASCAR beginning in 2006, replacing the Taurus.

The difference can be heard as the flat-plane crankshafts result in the engine having a smoother, higher-pitched sound than cross-plane ( for example, IRL IndyCar Series compared to NASCAR Nextel Cup, or a Ferrari 355 compared to a Chevrolet Corvette ).

Ralph Dale Earnhardt, Sr. ( April 29, 1951February 18, 2001 ) was an American race car driver, best known for his involvement in stock car racing for NASCAR.

Fans began honoring Earnhardt by holding three fingers aloft on the third lap of every NASCAR Cup race, and the television coverage of NASCAR on Fox and NASCAR on NBC went silent for each third lap from Rockingham to the following year's race there in honor of Earnhardt For the first three weeks after Earnhardt's death, on-track incidents brought out the caution flag on lap three.

Celebrity hearse enthusiasts include rock singer Neil Young and two-time NASCAR Nextel Cup Champion Tony Stewart, who had his hearse customised for a television show.

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.

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.

In 1997, after his sponsorship with Coca-Cola ended, NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon signed a long term contract with Pepsi, and he drives with the Pepsi logos on his car with various paint schemes for about 2 races each year, usually a darker paint scheme during nighttime races.

" 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.

* NASCAR was hosted at Dover International Speedway, most drivers have special paint jobs with America flags for honor of the September 11 attacks, in God Bless the USA which was composed by Lee Greenwood, showed the aftermath of the World Trade Center in New York City.

Also in 1957, Chevrolet sold enough of their new fuel injected engines to the public in order to make them available for racing ( and Ford began selling superchargers as an option ), but Bill France immediately banned fuel injection and superchargers from NASCAR before they could race.

NASCAR eventually adopted a restrictor plate to limit top speeds for the 7. 0L engine as teams switched to small-block 358 cu. in.

NASCAR, and the auto manufacturers have become aware of this, and for 2013 each brand ( Chevy, Dodge, Ford, and Toyota ) have redesigned their racing sheetmetal to more resemble the street models of their cars.

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.

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.

The most prominent championship in stock car racing is the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, named after its sponsor Sprint Nextel.

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.

NASCAR stars take various paths to the highest stock car divisions.

In this, it shares some similarity with the American stock car racing ( governed by NASCAR ).

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.

* Team Red Bull – a racing team competing in the U. S .- based stock car racing competition NASCAR Red Bull Racing Team competed in NASCAR beginning in 2007.

The paper clip-shaped Martinsville Speedway, the shortest track in NASCAR stock car racing

Cartwright has shown an interest in stock car racing and as of 2007 was seeking a NASCAR license.

The NASCAR Nationwide Series is a stock car racing series owned and operated by the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing.

He also competed in American NASCAR stock cars, driving a 7 litre Holman Moody Ford on the banked speedway at Rockingham, North Carolina on 29 October 1967.

He raced stock cars in NASCAR and USAC.

SunValley Speedway brings stock cars, including a NASCAR Canadian Tire Series national event, to their facility north of Vernon.

Except for five races in 1973, driving for Bud Moore Engineering, Waltrip primarily drove his own cars at the beginning of his NASCAR career until the middle of the 1975 Winston Cup season when he was signed a multi-year contract and replace driver Donnie Allison to drive the # 88 DiGard Chevrolet, Waltrip's long awaited jump into the big leagues of United States stock car auto racing.

When NASCAR introduced its " strictly stock " series, Rexford appeared in three races that were held in the Northeast, with a best finish of 3rd.

:* A pair of good ol ' boys, played by Terry Bradshaw and Mel Tillis, drive a street-legal replica of Donnie Allison's Hawaiian Tropic-sponsored NASCAR Winston Cup Chevrolet stock car owned by Hoss Ellington.

* A 2008 ad features Brian Kenny poking fun at NASCAR driver Matt Kenseth in the cafeteria simply because stock car racing has its roots in the southern United States ( Kenseth is from Wisconsin ).

He arrived at NASCAR, the highest and most expensive level of stock car racing in the United States, with only a borrowed pickup truck, a racecar, no sponsor, and a limited budget.

In late 2009, Trulli was asked to test a NASCAR stock car in North America for Toyota.

During his first few races, Cole has difficulty adjusting to the larger NASCAR stock cars and communicating with his crew while being intimidated on the track by Winston Cup Champion Rowdy Burns ( Michael Rooker ); this results in Cole not finishing the races, mostly due to crashes or engine blowouts.