Turns Are Essential

So I recently had the pleasure of taking a road trip to Sacramento from Los Angeles.  its about 400 miles worth of driving up the interstate through the center of California.  Now for those of you unfamiliar with California we have that old cliche "sand and sun in the morning and snow and mountains by night".  FYI no one here does that. The Central Valley is also not this,  its Cow pasture in the morning and cow pasture at night.  The drive is nice but can be a touch tedious after 250 miles of farmland.

I digress, anyway this trip took place the same weekend as the Daytona 500, and it got me to thinking about all the haters on Nascar.  Its the typical argument, "Nascar isn't a sport its just cars making left turns all day."  I do agree that when the races are un-eventful it is just cars making left turns.  Now I ask you to think about a car race where the cars went straight for 500 miles.  I could not imagine something any more boring.  Thus it really makes those left turns extremely essential to the sport of racing.

I mean without those left turns you have no crashes, you have no excitement at all.  You want to make racing more safe just take out the left turns and make it straight and flat.  No more massive banking turns just flat out straight racing.  Starting at the back of the pack? Too bad you better make sure you can drive straight the fastest in qualifying or your screwed in our new straight race.

 So i say to all Nascar haters, if you want to see what a sport really is, hop in your car, set a destination 500 miles away by freeway, drink some water, wear a diaper, take stops while driving that last less than 15 seconds, (including fuel) and see how long you last and how far you get.  It may not be running or a feat of brute strength, but racing in terms of human endurance and sheer speed is amazing to watch.  Check it out.