While watching what few seconds of the Daytona 500 I saw while passing through my grandparents' living room a couple of weekends ago, I began to think about stock car racing as a sport.
Particularly, I was astounded by the numbers surrounding the race: 40 vehicles (give or take a few) traveling 500 miles in a single day.
In case the math doesn’t pop out at you, that’s 20,000 miles on a circular track during the span of just a few hours.
Twenty thousand miles! (I’m spelling it out for emphasis.)
When I said that out loud on Sunday, someone responded, “That’s about like driving around the world.”
“No, that can’t be right,” I muttered under my breath, resolving to check it out the next day at work.
Again I was proven wrong: the circumference of the world is 24,901 miles.
The amount of fuel used during the Daytona 500 could almost power a single vehicle around the entire globe!
And it’s not like they use regular gas in those things. They use that high-octane stuff that really works on the atmosphere.
Maybe that’s why it is always so hot in Daytona: they’ve managed to burn a hole clear through the ozone layer into space.
Come to think of it, space might be the answer for many of NASCAR’s problems.
Here’s my idea (bear with me on this one): I propose that we send NASCAR drivers to the moon.
Can’t you just imagine those guys and gals flying across the rocky surface up there at one-sixth the earth’s gravity?
And who cares if we destroy the moon’s environment? It’s not like we actually live up there!
Space: the final frontier... for NASCAR.

Printed in the March 7, 2013 edition