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Author Explains Why There’s More to NASCAR Than Left Turns

For the average person, the sport of NASCAR may look like a bunch of big, colorful cars driving around an oval a couple hundred times until one driver is determined the winner. While that description

Author Explains Why There’s More to NASCAR Than Left Turns

Tom Fudge: NASCAR is the second-most popular sport on television in America today. That's a fact that surprises a lot of people because unless you've been properly introduced to the sport, you don't really get it. To be perfectly honest, I have to include myself in the ranks of the uninitiated. On some given weekend day, I'll mistakenly flip my TV to a channel carrying a NASCAR event. I see cars going 'round and 'round in a circle. Once I see what it is, I hit the channel changer again.

Liz Clarke was probably like that before she got a job as a sportswriter for the Charlotte Observer and someone said, “Congratulations, you're covering NASCAR.”

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Not an insubstantial assignment in Charlotte, which is the Mecca of the NASCAR creed. Since that time, Liz has actually become a NASCAR fan, and she's written a book called One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation.

Guest

  • Liz Clarke, is a sportswriter for The Washington Post , and author of the new book One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation .