Impact of Racing Sport on Car Cars

The sport of racing has had its fair share of contributors over the years but few have had as much of an impact on a sport as these men. In this paper, I am going to tell you about 4 people/Organizations who have had a significant impact on Stock, Pro-stock, Top-fuel, and Funny cars. The individual who contributed the most to stock car and Pro-Stock Car racing is Bill France. William Henry Getty France Sr. was born on September 26, 1909, in Washington D.C. As a child, he grew up on a farm and was enamored with fixing cars and racing Bill finished High School and attended the Institute of Banking in Washington DC. In 1947, Bill formed the organization that would eventually be called Nascar in Daytona Beach, Florida. He made the company because drivers were at the mercy of their promoters and he wanted to provide stability to racers. He was able to create the company by collaborating with the drivers.

Big Bill also wanted to make the sport safer for the drivers and more fair by creating classes or cars and parameters for car modifications. Before him, the driver's hospital bills were not always paid, and the conditions were not as monitored for the racers. He faced financial problems but his experience as a bank clerk helped him do all the paperwork. Today NASCAR racing is the number one sport to watch, and also the organization responsible for popularizing racing Marketing, and advertising on cars is very lucrative. The Organization that had the biggest impact on funny car racing is Dodge. It was the corporation that built the first “Funny Cars” and also popularised the sport of drag racing. dodge was founded in 1913 by the Dodge brothers in Detroit, Michigan, And the first funny cars were made in 1963. The reason they were made was to boost sales for Dodge and also just to make a really fast car. The cars were made as light as possible for maximum speed and that made them weaker and seen as more dangerous. This hurdle was overcome by the efforts of Don Beebe, a race promoter from Michigan who decided to promote the Funny cars and paid $250,000 to build them and support the drivers.

The cars were a success with them generating a decent profit and what occurred as a result was that the drivers wear firesuits now and the added parachutes. Funny cars added excitement to the car racing sport and pushed the limits of speed. The man that had the biggest impact on Pro-Stock racing was Wally Parks, who popularised hot rods. He was born in 1913 in Goltry, Oklahoma, but grew up in California. In 1937 he joined a precursor to the NHRA and also worked as a test driver in a General Motors plant. When WWII rolled around he was deployed and drove around the Philippines fixing anything the military needed him to. He became the business manager of the SCTA shortly after returning and organized the very first hot rod show. In 1951 he founded the NHRA or national hot rod association because of his love for cars. One of the biggest challenges was the name hot rod, as it once was a term for inexperienced teenage racers. Although a long battle, he eventually popularised hot rods and also set many of the standards for the sport. Today hot rods are also known as Pro-Stock and the NHRA is still a very popular organization today. CJ Heart Was one of the most influential people to the field of Top-fuel cars.

He was born in Findlay, Ohio, on April 29, 1911. His mother died within days of his birth, and his father gave him away to his neighbors. He had a criminal reccord, and one time he was caught stealing moonshine. He was a dragster and even reached a top speed of 156 mph. After being chased out of an abandoned navy airfield, he asked airport officials if he could race cars on their runways and they agreed. The deal was that the races would only happen on Sunday and the airport would get 10% of the admission fees. In 1950, He opened the first official drag strip in the state of California at John wane airport. His impact on drag racing was groundbreaking and transformed drag racing from a peer to peer event into a spectator sport. In conclusion, the impacts of these men on racing are almost immeasurable as they were responsible for shaping the sport. If they had not done what they did, then the sport of racing would be unrecognizable from what it is today.

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