Guess what, Well, what's that?

Mango?

So I'm not really into car racing, you know this?

I mean I have watched Talladega Nights.

I'm also familiar with Pixar's Cars movie and Cars two.

So actually not how I say that.

Basically, I'm an expert, but.

I think you are an expert.

That's fair to say.

But as we were looking into the strange origins of NASCAR and F one this week, I actually stumbled into this story about TLC's Nascar Wives reality show.

Have you heard about this?

I haven't.

Was this like Jersey Shore or Real Housewives or what?

Yeah?

I mean that was kind of the idea.

But they wanted to play on stereotypes and have all the usual drama you have baked into these things, and the hope was that would appeal to all the NASCAR fans out there.

But they actually had to cancel the show because the wives gone along too well.

Isn't that great?

That actually kind of makes me like NASCAR even more.

I know, but today's show is really for outsiders like us, Like what makes NASCAR and F one racing so appealing?

And why do people bring their yachts to one type of car race?

While family's caravan to the other.

And that's what today's show is all about.

So let's dive in.

Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.

I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and on the other side of the soundproof glass, he's the only guy who wears driving gloves while seated at a soundboard.

Now that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil.

I mean, in all fairness to Tristan, his chair does have wheels on it.

That's a good point.

I didn't think about that well either way.

It's nice when he gets into the spirit of the day's topic.

And you know, as you might have guessed, for this episode, we're headed off to the races and we're going to take a look at two of the world's most popular motor sports.

Now we're talking NASCAR and Formula One.

But even though those sports may seem similar on the surface, each one has its own very distinct style, history and fan base.

So today we're going to break down the differences.

And I really tried to get a sense of how these vastly different racing institutions have managed to share the road for I guess it's about seven decades now.

So you know, a few years back, I was chatting with our friend Dan Riley, who's written some amazing stories on F one for GQ, and one of the things he told me was that when this F one champ came to the US, he was actually taking selfies of himself in Penn Station in New York City and no one recognized him.

He's like this insane superstar.

And apparently the TV audience for the races there is like five hundred million viewers, which is like five Super Bowls.

I mean, it's incredible.

But in the US he's totally anonymous.

Actually, the other thing he told me was that Dan actually got to sit in the passenger seat as the driver drove on an F one test course in Jersey City, but he was driving a mini van, and he said he was terrified, Like the driver knew exactly how to handle all the curves and corners and straightaways, but he was in total control.

But still, minivans shouldn't go that fast.

Oh, that is terrifying.

I can't say that I've ever driven my minivan as fast as he was probably driving.

But you're right, I mean, they have such different audiences.

I actually remember going to Austin one year.

I think we were presenting it south By Southwest that year, and I was talking to the clerk at the rental car place and just made a comment just in passing that south By has to be one of the worst times of year for you, right, And he actually said, it's nothing compared to when they have the F one races, because you know, not only is there this insane crowd there, but all these rich people just come in and buy up all the houses so they have a place to party.

I was like, so what do they do with them after that?

And he said they actually just sell them a couple months later.

Like the audience is just that rich.

It's kind of insane.

But that's what makes the comparison between the two sports so interesting.

And I didn't realize before this episode that NASCAR and F one they actually pretty much came up together mid century.

And you know, NASCAR was officially incorporated in the US in nineteen forty eight, and then Formula one was just a couple of years later than that in Europe.

That's crazy, Like I never would have imagined that NASCAR was older than Formula One.

But yeah, it is interesting to think about those like early post war years and how I guess like the whole world was just itching to get back to friendlier competitions, and I'm sure they were also curious to see what some of the new technology could do when it was put to more fun uses.

Well, you know, there's a lot of obvious stuff that's similar between the two.

But I do think we should probably talk about, you know, what sets NASCAR and F one apart from each other before we get too deep into their history.

So for starters, we definitely need to take a look at the cars themselves, since that's ultimately where the biggest differences lie.

So, you know, right off the bat, it's easy to tell an F one car from a NASCAR just by the shape of the car.

You've got these nascars that look a little bit more like the kind of car you see on the road every day, you know, the boxy, more enclosed kind of sedan type vehicle.

And you know, I actually think your car may even have the Giant Tide logo on the front.

I mean, how great would it be if like Giant Cup and these starts sponsoring people's daily commutes like if teachers didn't have to pay for the gas to go to work because it was all covered by folgers or something, it'd be.

Great, nice idea.

In fact, to the car design.

You know, I love boxy cars as a former Volvo station Wagon driver, but F one racers are the ones that look completely different than what you or I would drive, right, Yeah.

I mean there may be what most people would think of when you're trying to picture a race car, and they have that kind of that narrow, open cockpit design and the wheels that stick out to the sides and the big spoiler on the back, and overall they tend to just look more sleek than their NASCAR counterparts.

And that sleek design is actually crucial because in F one racing, the aerodynamics that's really of equal importance to the power of the engine.

So everything about the car is designed to minimize the drag and maximize the speed.

And this also means that Formula one cars tend to be much lighter.

So looking at it's about fifteen hundred pounds on average for an F one car, and that's compared to over three thousand pounds for a typical NASCAR so it's twice as heavy when you're talking about a NASCAR.

That's funny, And I've actually read that like F one drivers tend to be lighter, like they're like five eight in size and on the lighter side.

But like looking at that weight comparison, like my expectation would be the F one cars would be faster than.

NASCAR cars, right, well not really.

I mean the lighter weight and sleeker design of the F one racers means, you know, they can actually achieve these high speeds with less powerful engines, but they do tend to be a little bit faster than nascars, and both kinds of vehicles top out in the range or around two hundred miles an hour.

But you can actually push an F one to two hundred and five or even as high as two hundred and fifteen miles an hour without as much trouble.

Well, that's crazy, and that is terrifying to me, like those sorts of speeds.

But you know what's funny is like I was thinking about the cars cars to actually a Pixar, and I just assumed that they made the F one cars in the NASCAR cars about the same speed because it would appeal to American audiences.

I didn't realize that it would be like factually accurate that they're the same.

But cars too is very factually accurate them credit well, Vixar is.

Great at that, Like even up like that movie, they actually used the number of balloons that would lift that house like they oh circulated with engineers.

But that's pretty cool.

But I do think there's something that's like exponentially more dangerous about driving than anything else we do in our day.

And I can't imagine like driving at two hundred or two hundred five miles per hour.

It just seems insane.

Yeah, and you know, an F one racing in particular, it was actually a pretty deadly sport when it first started.

In fact, just looking at the numbers, there were thirteen drivers that were killed in the first decade of Formula one races alone.

But thankfully, you know, these safety standards have been greatly improved over the years.

And actually no one has died behind the wheel of an F one car since nineteen ninety four, so we're talking decades now since there's been a fatality.

That's pretty impressive.

I wouldn't have imagined that.

And of course, if we're going to talk about the danger aspect of high speed motorsports, we should also talk about something that goes hand in hand with it, which is the spectacle it provides, right, because, like you said at the top of the show, so these are two of the biggest motorsports in the world, both in terms of revenue and in fan bases.

All right, So I looked at this on the Formula one side, and it really is an international sport in terms of its audience.

So you've got twenty or so annual races that make up the Grand Prix series and those actually take place in nineteen different countries, which is pretty remarkable, and you got up to three hundred thousand people gathering for a single event.

Now, in terms of overall viewership, you know, it's what you mentioned earlier.

You've got nearly half a billion people that watch at least fifteen minutes of F one racing at some point during any given season, and that's according to BBC's top Gear.

But you know, when you add up all the revenue from ticket sales and advertising, that F one industry makes roughly about one and a half billion dollars a year.

Which isn't too shabby.

And okay, so F one racing definitely has global appeal on its side, but here in the US, there's no question that NASCAR reigns supreme.

In fact, about seventy five million American adults consider themselves NASCAR fans, which is one in every three people.

And wow, of that huge pool of fans, about three point five million cran the cells into speedways around the country every year.

Meanwhile, NASCAR races are also broadcast to one hundred and fifty countries, which helps drum up about three billion dollars in sponsorship money.

Well, I'm curious, like, did you get a sense for who these fans are?

I mean, and NASCAR fans tend to be stereotyped pretty hard.

I mean, you know, as people from the rural South or Middle America who are white and lower income.

But I'm kind of hoping there's a little more nuance there than most people might guess.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting, and we'll talk about the statistics in a second.

But I know we've both driven to the brickyard because we ended up on work trips in Indianapolis.

But you know, you're so close to Talladega and Birmingham.

Have you ever actually gone to a.

Race I've never actually been to a race, and I've driven past Talladega so many times.

It's right in between the two cities that I spend a lot of time in between, you know, Birmingham where I'm from, in Atlanta, where our offices are, and every time I go by, they have these massive flags that are flying nearby, and it's just such an interesting place and have always wanted to go to a race.

But there is one thing that I observe every single time I go by there, and I'm really curious to look this up, but I think they might be in the running for the largest gathering of porta pottis in the world.

I mean, it is unbelievable.

If you drive by there on a race week, I swear it seems like there are just thousands of these things out there.

So I kind of want to look into this at some point, just to see if they might have that claim to fame.

I like that NASCAR, you know, followers are just like you and me.

They also use the bathroom they too.

You know, we're all alike, Mango.

There's so much that makes us in common.

So I didn't find any statistics about that toilet situation.

You're talking about.

But I did find some statistics on NASCAR fans in an Atlantic article, And while some of the stereotypes we commonly associate with NASCAR are born out by the numbers, some definitely aren't.

So for instance, two political pulling groups found that nineteen percent of all American voters identified themselves NASCAR fans, and sixty percent of those fans live outside the southeast US.

I definitely wouldn't have predicted that.

So, like, nineteen percent of all American voters are NASCAR fans.

That is unbelievable.

All right, so it's maybe more geographically diverse than we might have thought.

But what about other stuff like income and gender and ethnicity, Like, are NASCAR fans more diverse than those areas too?

Well?

Yes and no.

So the stereotype about most NASCAR fans being white is certainly true, and in fact, according to Nielsen's data, NASCAR's audience actually has the highest share of white people among all broadcast sports.

It's a whopping ninety four percent.

Like I couldn't believe.

Wow.

But that said, NASCAR also boasts the highest share of female viewers.

Thirty seven percent of its audience is made up of women and even in terms of finance, like there's a greater degree of variety than we've been told.

So, for example, of the voters who self identify as NASCAR fans, forty two percent earned between forty thousand and one hundred thousand a year, which means like a good chunk of NASCAR fans are wealthier than the average American.

And to be frank like f.

One drivers have actually talked about it.

They claim they're envious of some of the NASCAR audience because it's more of a sport that families can watch together and instead of something that feels like a little colder and just about status.

And even the drivers like they're more approachable.

M well, all right, So so public opinion maybe a little off base about NASCAR fans and in some ways, and I guess pretty accurate in others.

And I do like that the sports styles itself is something made by and for ordinary people.

I mean, you think about it, they're no Lamborghinis or Ferraris in the sport and said, you're gonna find these cars by like Ford and General Motors, And of course they've been modified after the fact so they can hold their own on these races.

But there's still somewhat of a level of familiarity there, and I guess it does make the sport feel more approachable.

No kidding.

You know, I've never been to either a NASCAR or F one race, and I'd actually love to go to both.

But my friend Jeremy once told me that you'd actually see Amish families come to Dover Downs to watch races, and I think that's kind of amazing, right, like something I never would have guessed.

But I also don't think you'd find the homage going to F one races, right right.

I knew you were talking about the wealth that would fly into Austin, but I read this one article that said the yachts people bring to Monaco or Belgium or wherever are one hundred and fifty million dollar boats, which is insanity, and you wonder, like why they're dropping so much on a boat, and the author's answer was, well, you need something to take to your private islands.

Yeah.

I mean it makes a good point.

You got you got to get there somehow.

I know.

But like that audience feels like such a barrier of entry to me.

I mean, like formula one just feels as elitist as it.

Gets Yeah, I mean that that sounds pretty accurate.

And I've heard the sports compared, like you know, like hot dogs versus or dervs or sometimes you know beer versus champagne when you're thinking about the difference between the two.

So obviously I get the connection between beer and Nascar, but like champagne actually has a connection with Formula one, right, oh, definitely.

I mean, you know, the idea of popping champagne bottles has long been asssociated with huge wins or winning championships in sports, and actually that active celebration got it start from F one racing.

So this goes back to nineteen fifty.

This is when the first French Grand Prix was held in the country's Champagne region, and naturally, because of where it was held, the winner of that year's race was presented with this bottle of the region's trademark beverage.

And actually that's a custom that's still around today.

I mean, that's a little like how Federer won a milking cow for winning a tennis tournament in Switzerland.

I think, did that really happen?

Yeah, you didn't know what to do with it.

I can imagine like you're gonna pack it and take it on the plane or what.

But so so the winner just emptied the bottle into the crowds or something like that.

Seems like something that would have really ticked off the audience.

Well not really.

I mean, the first time an F one racer sprayed the crowd with the champagne happened.

It was really more like a decade later.

I think it was in the sixties, and the locals were okay with it because you know, this was actually a mistake.

And so Nick Carvel had this great article on it in GQ, and he described the event this way, says, upon winning the twenty four Hours of Laman in nineteen sixty six, Joe Sipherd accidentally sprayed the crowd as the bottle of champagne had been sitting out in the sun, causing pressure to build up inside the magnum.

The next year, Californian racer Dan Gurney deliberately copied Stiffer's gesture when he won the same race, and a tradition was born, which is.

Awesome, but like a magnum, like that's two wine bottles, right.

Yeah, well, actually it's even more nowadays.

So currently F one winners receive a full Jeroboama champagne for the big win.

So wait, what's a jeroboe.

Well, it's actually the equivalent of four standard wine bottles, So all the better to soak the crowd with, I guess.

But if for anyone who wants to re enact their favorite F one victories, the official champagne of the league is the gh Mom cordon Rouge, so you can score your own Jeroboama of it for about, yeah, like four hundred bucks.

Okay, so I can definitely see why the NFL just sticks with buckets of Gatorade.

But you know, Formula one isn't the only motorsport with boozy roots, and in fact, it is actually a strong case for thinking of NASA car as an unintended product of the prohibition era.

You know, I've read something about this before, but I didn't really get the full story.

So do you mind just kind of walking us through this?

Definitely, But first let's take a quick break.

You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the ins and outs of NASCAR, So mango drinking and driving definitely don't go well together.

But you were actually saying there's a connection between the two that somehow gave rise to NASCAR.

Yeah, so, decades before NASCAR came along, Apple Ashian bootleggers began running homemade whiskey up and down the East Coast during Prohibition.

And many of these guys were family farmers who'd fallen on hard times and turned to moonshine as a way to keep their heads above water.

And of course, desperate or not, what they were doing was very, very illegal, so it helped to have a car that could make some serious tracks whenever they cross paths with Federal Asians.

And so the biggest godsend for these bootleggers actually came from Henry Ford in nineteen thirty two, and that's because that's the year he debuted the V eight engine.

This is kind of a weird connection though, because it wasn't Ford a teetotaler.

I mean, I actually think I'd read that he made all his employees take a temperance pledge just to work in his factories.

Right, Yeah, so he wouldn't have been too pleased to learn that his flagship engine was basically driving the bootleging business.

But yeah, the V eight was perfect for it.

Like it was fast enough to evade the law and tough enough to withstand the strain of all those mountain roads.

And of course bootleggers didn't stop there for added security.

They actually started souping up their cars with all these features straight out of like a speed racer cartoon.

What I mean, like, I'm imagining the ability to like press a button and spray oil all over the road or stuff like that.

Yeah, so I know you're joking, but I mean oil, slicks, smoke screens, you name it.

Like they even rigged up that classic gag where like a bucket of tax is spilled out onto the road.

Now way straight out of Super Mario cars.

Seriously, except like they were high tailing away from the cops.

And also, this is a little aside, but I remember this from mental Floss that when like bootleggers would be on the run and have to flee their cars, they actually had these shoes made that had hoofprints on them, So basically they'd leave these deer tracks in the mud instead of shoe prints.

Isn't that like super crafty?

It is crafty, But I think we've got a little off track here, Like, so what does this have to do with NASCAR?

Well, before prohibsion even ended, some of the bootleggers had started having these informal races, you know.

Just for kicks.

That does make sense.

I mean, you've got all these tricked out cars, it does seem like it'd be pretty tempting to have some fun with them, exactly.

And then in the nineteen thirties, like bootleggers started taking their moonshine mobiles to local race tracks and even county fairgrounds, and that's where they really started to build an audience and eventually like tens of thousands of people would show up to some of these races.

All right, so this is kind of like the birth of stock car racing in America.

But the actual formalized NASCAR league does it also have its ties with bootleggers.

It does, so, so racing had become an organized sport by the nineteen forties, and most of the people involved in it had connections to bootlegging in one form and another.

There's actually a great book about this called Real Nascar, and it talks about just how much of the sport owes to moonshiner's.

So the author rights quote what most chroniclers of stock car racing and NASCAR have failed to note is that a large percentage of the early mechanics, car owners, promoters, and track owners had deep ties to the illegal alcohol business.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the sport was built on the proceeds of the manufacturer transport and sales of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of cases of liquor, right, I mean, that's amazing.

So even if they weren't bootleggers themselves, like the mechanics definitely knew they were working on bootleggers cars, and similarly, all these track owners they were taking cuts from illegal sales in exchange for use of their track.

That connection definitely goes much deeper than I would have expected.

So what about the drivers though, Like, did any bootleggers go on to become NASCAR drivers?

Absolutely?

And one of the most famous is Junior Johnson, who came from a long line of North Carolina bootleggers and went on to become a NASCAR Hall of Famer and team owner.

There's actually a great old story about him in Esquire, and he and plenty of other former Moonshiners were recruited as drivers in the late forties by a fellow stock car driver, this guy named Bill Franz Senior, and France actually became an important figure in all this.

He started promoting his drivers at different races in the Daytona Beach area, but he was soon annoyed by how much the racing rules varied from one event to another.

So in December of nineteen forty seven, France actually called a meeting of all the top stock car drivers and he got the mechanics and owners to come in as well, and they all discussed how to standardize the rules, and by the end of the meeting they agreed to form the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, which is NASCAR.

So that's what it stands for.

Okay, yeah, definitely.

And and Bill Franz Senior became the first president of NASCAR once the league was officially incorporated, this is in February nineteen forty eight.

Under his leadership, the sport began to distance itself from its boot like roots, and they started going after corporate sponsorships and you know, building a wider audience.

And by the time his son, Bill Franz Junior took over the presidency in nineteen seventy two, NASCAR had become this incredibly popular regional sport in the South.

But it was Bill Junior who really made the sport huge.

He had this three decade run as president, and that's when the sport transformed into a multi billion dollar global industry.

That's what you know of it today.

And I'm guessing like sponsorship probably played the biggest role in this transition.

Huh.

Yeah.

So the turning point of that actually came in nineteen seventy and that's when Junior Johnson approached the RJ.

Reynolds Tobacco Company.

So Johnson had retired as a driver by at this point, but he stayed in the league as an owner, and he hoped that the cigarette company might want to sponsor his car in the upcoming season.

So, I mean, why would this be an unprecedented move?

Was it just that it was a tobacco company or what.

So I looked into this because I was confused about it too.

But the thing is, like President Nixon had actually signed a bill in April nineteen seventy they had banned all cigarette advertising on TV beginning of the following year, so Johnson knew the company would be looking for new ways to spend its advertising budget the next year.

And of course Johnson liked to live dangerously, you know, like cigarette advertising didn't bother him at all.

But RJ.

Reynolds was a long shot.

Like until that point, most of NASCAR's sponsorships were limited to local or regional businesses, and a company as big as RJ.

Reynolds would that'd be like a huge win for the sport.

But instead of just sponsoring like one car, Reynolds decided to turn down that offer and they put their money behind one hundred thousand dollars championship series called the Winston Cup.

It was this super smart marketing move for them, and until two thousand and three it remained the top series in NASCAR until it took on a new sponsor.

It became the next Tel Cup, and then like it changed hands to the Sprint Cup.

And I think it's now like the Monster Energy Cup.

The Monster Energy Cup.

All right, Well, you know, if boos and cigarettes acted as NASCAR's backbone for the first what three or four decades of its existence, like, how do we eventually get from this to Tide and Monster Energy drinks?

So that change actually happened in the mid eighties, and this is when Procter and Gamble decided to sponsor a few cars with brands like UH, Crisco and Folgers.

And this is when Tide comes into the mix as well.

And once other companies had heard how the logo branded cars had boosted P andng's sales, they all decided to throw their hats in the ring as well.

So, you know, you fast forward thirty years and everything from like Cheerios to Spam to even the cartoon Network is out a car.

It's amazing, and they've paid pretty handsomely for that honor.

Like I think a primary sponsorship, which is when the logo is on the hood of a car and it's also on the racing team's uniforms, that runs between ten and twenty five million dollars.

Oh wow, I mean, And so is it worth it for these companies to spend that much money?

You know, you always ask these things, and I looked into it.

But the market research bears out like NASCAR fans are apparently three times more likely as non fans to buy products from companies that sponsored their sport of choice.

Part of the reason is that they're so attached to the drivers that they're also attrached to the driver sponsors.

But another big part is just how much exposure these brands get.

So like the Las Vegas Review Journal reported that the average screen time for a car's primary sponsor during a race is about twelve and a half minutes.

Like, imagine how many millions of dollars it would cost to eric commercial that long.

And that exposure only goes up if a sponsor's driver wins or sadly Rex's car like In fact, a pr man for the Richard Childress Racing team once told a reporter quote, if you crash, crash fabulously, and make sure your logo is not wrinkled up.

So class.

All right, well speaking which we should probably take some time now to talk about the history of NASCAR is more posh counterpart, But before we do that, let's take a quick break.

Welcome back to parton genius.

All right, will, So, what's the story behind Formula One?

Like?

Was it started by smugglers or maybe some jewel thieves?

You know, that might be a nice story, but there's actually no criminal component for this one.

And instead what we get with Formula One is a professional racing league that really gradually grew from those pioneering car races in France, that these were taking place back before nineteen hundred.

I mean, think about that, these were the earliest days of motor racing.

So explain this to me, Like, if racing was that popular from the start over there, why did it takes so long for F one to be formalized.

Well, it's actually because the beginning of World War two.

You know, you had European racing that had continued growing in popularity through the early decades of the twentieth century, and this was right up until the Germans began to dominate in the nineteen thirties.

So although there were plans for an official Formula one championship, and they'd already been discussed by this point, they had to be set aside until after the war.

So once again there's a pesky world war that spoils our fun.

Spoils all the fun.

But you know, by nineteen forty six, the term Formula one was formally defined and these plans were put in motion for the Sports owned Drivers Championship.

Now, it did take a few years to figure out all the details, but it was in nineteen fifty that's when the very first F one World Championship was finally held and this was at the Silverstone Circuit in England.

Okay, so don't laugh, but you just mentioned that Formula one was officially defined at one point, and it occurs to me that I have no idea what the term really means, Like, does it refer to a certain kind of fuel the cars use or maybe a certain kind of motor oil?

Oh, good guesses, but actually not accurate on that.

And I can't laugh at you because I didn't know this either until I looked it up.

But you know, the formula and Formula one racing actually refers to the rules that govern the car's design.

So you go back to the beginning on this.

That formula was taken from the pre war regulations that really pertained the engine's capacity, and it was first known as Formula A.

Now, over the years, the formula's been tweaked a good bit and now it counts for both like new technology and environmental concerns, but it's still based on the car's engine.

So, for example, the current formula is built around this hybrid power unit that actually includes the turbocharge V six engine, but it's electrically assisted by this power generated from kinetic energy as well.

Oh wow.

And do most F one teams build and modify their own engines like NASCAR teams.

Also, this isn't aside, but I think it's funny that F one is so fancy, like partially because I remember that in that documentary about Senna the driver, which is honestly so good, the way he came up in F one was by raising go karts like go cars feel so everyk in the world.

I know, I love that.

It definitely feels that way.

But you know what's funny is that unlike NASCAR, there there really isn't much room for improvisation in F one, and I kind of wonder if the improv part is is maybe that American influence on the sport.

But instead you've got these eleven official F one teams and they all get their power trains from one of four engine manufacturers.

So you've got Ferrari, Honda, Mercedes, Benz, and Renault.

And even if an F one team doesn't build their own engine, they're still responsible for much of the does of the car.

And honestly, I mean that's the part that seems to count for the most and Formula one.

Yeah, so one thing.

I've always heard about f one is the huge emphasis that plays on like top of the line tech and this efficient design.

Like some people swear that the whole thing is just this elaborate pet project of technicians and engineers masquerading as a sport.

It's almost like the racing is secondary to these design teams getting to experiment and mess around.

Well, I mean, I think for some there's probably a lot of truth to that.

You know, many longtime fans really think the focus on the car itself has long since eclipse the actual drivers.

And huh, this is something that first started happening back as early as the seventies, and these cars had steadily grown faster and more sleek since those very early days of the sport and all the r and D for this constant quest to reduce drag and increase cornering speeds.

It was starting to get super expensive, you know, so much so that by the seventies there were really no private entries in this sport because it was just so expensive.

I mean, that's almost a shame.

Yeah, I'm curious though, like how much do these cars actually cost?

So it varies, of course, but a good rule of thumb is to take a team's entire racing budget for a year and then cut that in half.

So for the top teams, we're talking about spending upwards of two hundred and fifty million dollars on the sport each year.

Yeah, so that's about one hundred and twenty five million of that that goes toward the car for that season.

And even the bottom teams are dropping huge dollars on this, anywhere from like twenty to fifty million dollars on average.

I mean, that's insanity to me.

So why are these expensive?

Like are the materials just that pricey?

Well, it's not so much the individual parts that cost so much.

It's actually, you know, the entire labor force needed to design and develop and build, and then even beyond that, just to constantly modify the product, and this massive amount of cash needed to keep pace with the wealthier teams.

It's actually really starting to affect the outcomes of the races.

I mean, if you look at the highest ranking teams in the league, they also happen to be the ones with the most money.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, the last place finishers are typically the poorest teams.

And there's no coincidence to that.

So I remember hearing that the cash prizes in Formula one are among the highest in all of organized sports.

So couldn't it just be that the winning teams are the richest because they're the ones that just keep getting all the prize money.

Well, you know, if all the teams were starting on even footing, that might be the case.

But in reality, I mean, they're different deals for different teams, and some of the longest running ones get tens of millions of dollars just for showing up to the race.

It doesn't even matter if they win, huh.

You know.

And if you go back from like nineteen eighty one all the way up to say twenty thirteen, all the teams competed under the same financial deal.

But then once you started to see happening like these car manufacturers and long running legacy teams, they started angling for these special privileges and unique deals.

And so the league finally cave to this pressure because it was actually afraid these big names would just walk away from the sport.

So there was this really interesting article in the New York Times, and it was pretty insightful on the way that it looked at this.

This was back in twenty sixteen, and there's one part that sums up the problem pretty nicely, and I'll just read this to you.

It says today, even among the top teams, financial success does not correspond directly with success on the track.

Mercedes does not receive as much money as Ferrari, the Italian team that's been around since Formula One start in nineteen fifty and that received seventy million dollars a year because of that legacy.

Ferrari's special payment just for taking part is more than the total earnings of the bottom five teams and last year.

Oh man, I mean, that's a little discouraging, And I do wonder if the average F one fan knows about these dealings, right like, it seems like the kind of thing that could really turn people off the sport.

Well definitely, And it all goes back to that sense that the cars are the true stars in F one, not really the drivers.

And it's kind of a tough pill to swallow for a lot of sports fans because there's so much of their enjoyment that comes from reveling in human ability.

So it is kind of tough when they're treated as almost interchangeable in the car itself is really the only constant, So I guess that makes sense.

And I'd say that's only partially true, right, Like there are obvious stars of the sport, and you read about the seven minute pit stops where humans are making all these like microscopic changes to tire pressure and alignment to like corner a specific turn better.

But I do get your point, right, Like nobody watches tennis to see their favorite racket in action.

I don't know, there's nothing more beautiful than a really elegant racket anyway.

You know what's funny, as Andy Roddick actually used to play with an old babbel At racket, but the company used to paint it to look like a new model.

Which is oh really, it's so crazy playing with an old racket.

That's pretty weird.

Yeah, because you just got accustomed to it, all.

Right, Well, back to what we were talking about here, so that there is something I hope that the F one League does take note of.

And this is for the fans sake, because there's really a lot of skill that goes into being a professional racer, and I don't think most of us recognize that half as much as we should.

Really, Yeah, I found an Atlantic article that was kind of written in defense of motorsports, and there was one.

Quote that really stuck with me.

It was about stock car racing, but I really think it applies to all forms of motorsport, so I'm gonna pull it up.

It goes quote, The athletes who drive these cars, and yes they are athletes, even though they are sitting down, must possess steel nerves, quick reflexes, highly developed small motor skills, and the mental acuity to develop elaborate plans for dominating a track crowded with cars that could kill them.

And true fans understand the complexity of the sport and can discuss in great detail the combination of skills crucial for success.

Well, that kind of feels like the perfect place to leave our discussion.

But I do have a few more racing facts dying to share these, So what do you say?

We had to the factop.

So, I know people love to debate whether things like NASCAR are actually sports, but I don't think there's any debating that you have to be in good shape to withstand some of what your body's experienced.

So I was looking into some of the numbers, and first of all, the temperature in the car, and a NASCAR race is often over one hundred degrees and on turns, the drivers are feeling up to three g's of force on them.

That means three times the force of gravity.

And also drivers are losing up to ten pounds in sweat over the course of a race.

Ten pounds in sweat, Yeah, that's crazy.

I was actually looking in Ato some of this too, And it's not only these things, but like a driver's heart rate typically stays between like one hundred and twenty and one hundred and fifty beats per minute throughout the race.

Now we're talking three hours from all these races, and so that's actually about the same as a serious marathon runner over that period of time.

And I realized this is about f one.

But some of the drivers can actually go two minutes without blinking, that's how intense their concentration is.

That's amazing.

So here's a funny one.

I saw a fact that drivers in the major NASCAR races all have to pass physicals and a drug test, and I guess there's some sort of vetting process, but one thing they're not required to show is a driver's license.

So technically you can have someone like tearing off the tracks and nearly like two hundred miles per hour, who actually wouldn't be able to drive to the grocery store after the race.

I love the idea that that could possibly happen.

Well, so I've often wondered about the beating that the car parts take during the races and how long these parts last.

Did you know the F one car engines actually only last a couple of hours before they just blow entirely, Like, that's a little bit shorter than the fifteen to twenty years most of us expect that of our own car engines.

And also, not surprisingly, the tires only last about sixty or so miles in each race.

That's incredible.

Did you know there are actually no air bags in Formula one cars?

Wait?

What is this just like to add an extra element of danger or what?

No, it just turns out that there's so many other safety mechanisms that are more effective at keeping the driver safe.

So, I mean, it would be nearly impossible for a driver to be ejected from the car because of how well they're strapped in, like the crazy protective helmets and the five point harnesses which keep the drivers from slamming into the front of the car, which is really the main point of an airbag.

And all this on top of the fact that the drivers inside is survival cell that's designed to protect them in the vent of a crash.

All right, well, here's another one I found.

So there are small planes that take off at slower speeds than you'd find an F one car traveling during a race.

The aerodynamic science involved in creating that downward force, you know, to keep them on the track.

It's actually pretty amazing.

And by the way, F one cars can go from zero to one hundred miles per hour back to ero in about four seconds.

WI is it?

That's ridiculous.

Yeah, So, as I heads up, one thing you do not want to take with you to a race if you get a chance to sit on the infield is shelled peanuts.

And there are many superstitions in racing, like a friendly green cars are bad luck, But one of the weirdest is this one around peanut halls.

So there's an article in Snopes that claims that the tradition possibly dates back to a race in nineteen thirty seven where peanut shells were found in a few cars that all happen to crash in the race, and there are a few other stories that have contributed to this, but trust me, don't bring those shelled peanuts.

I know you love to crack over at baseball games.

Oh wow, right, well, I've got to tell you about my favorite NASCAR driver of all time, and that's Dick Trickle.

I mean, his name alone is pretty great and horrible at the same time, but so Dick loves smoking so much that he drilled a hole in his helmet so that he could smoke through his headgear.

And he even had a cigarette lighter installed into his car because he didn't want to bother his pit crew every time for a light.

That's pretty great.

So I think you have to take home the prize with that one.

Thank you know.

I think we did a pretty good job in this episode of like debunking some of the stereotypes and then we just came right back to it with that last fact.

But I'll take the victory either way.

I know we're both that much more excited to try to get to a race.

You know, we probably should have come up with a contest like the listener that gives us the best fact we would actually come to visit them and then they could pay for us to go to a NASCAR race, doesn't it seem great reasonable to me?

Or let us get on your yacht and then we'll go to a Formula one race together.

But either way, if we forgot some great facts, and I know we did, about either NASCAR or Formula one one or any other type of racing, we'd love to hear from you.

As always, you can email us part Time Genius at HowStuffWorks dot com.

You can also call us on our twenty four to seven fact hotline that's one eight four four pt Genius, or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.

We always love hearing from you, but thanks so much for listening.

Thanks again for listening.

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Do we do we forget Jason?

Jason who

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