Only Yesterday: What Racing Is

It’s definitely not spring in my neck of the woods, but it’s time for another trip around the sun and hundreds upon hundreds of trips around the track.

The first lap goes by fast, but it seems like there are so many laps ahead for so many drivers; so much racing to be had.

And it’ll be over before we know it.

The NASCAR Cup Series roars to life today. Every lap, every win, every milestone and every disappointment are, for these last too-quiet few minutes, still ahead. Everything is a possibility. Everything.

And it will seem like it’s over too soon.

When the engines go quiet again, all of those moments will be in the past. For better or for worse, 2024 will be etched into the history books, trophies claimed, championships won, memories made.

But that’s the future and this column is about history. Some of it just seems like only yesterday, some not so long ago.

But let’s talk about history for a minute. What is it, anyway? This sport is more — so, so much more — than wins and top fives and titles.

Not that those things don’t count. I like looking at racing by the numbers. You can pick apart a lot of races and seasons and careers with numbers and build them back up too. Some numbers tell a story of their own, others are a footnote, and they weave together to make something more than they are on their own.

But racing is about people. Hundreds of drivers have raced in the NASCAR Cup Series alone. Fewer than 10% of them has ever found victory lane. And for every one of them, there are hundreds more who never reached the upper levels, drivers who head out to the local bullring in hobby stocks because they want to drive fast and turn left and forget about the rest of the world for a couple of hours.

Hundreds more work on the cars, often toiling in relative anonymity, making them go faster and turn left-er and sound angrier.

There are owners and sponsors and officials. Sit down with an assortment of any of the above and ask them about the same event — every one of them will tell you a different story as seen through different eyes. And none of them are wrong.

There’s me, and other writers, who get to tell those stories, to make the old new again and the new relevant. We hold the sport in our hands and have the responsibility to treat it with respect and care. We make sure nobody is forgotten.

And there’s you. Fans have their own stories, their own part in this sport and everything it…