Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Before Speed, There Was Shine: How U.S. Regulations Accidentally Fueled American Motorsports

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Before Speed, There Was Shine: How U.S. Regulations Accidentally Fueled American Motorsports · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
• 0:04
  by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
• 0:07
  Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
• 0:11
  Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
• 0:16
  Economic Engines, the Unexpected Consequences of U.
• 0:19
  S.
• 0:19
  Regulatory Changes on Motorsports, by Quinn Beekwilder.
• 0:23
  Professor Buechwilder's passion for motorsport history drives him
• 0:25
  to design courses that highlight the historical development and
• 0:29
  societal impact of motorsports.
• 0:31
  His innovative approach includes experimental activities that
• 0:33
  blend theoretical knowledge with practical experience.
• 0:36
  In this presentation, Professor Buechwilder explores the unintended
• 0:39
  benefits of government regulations on motorsports, particularly how laws
• 0:43
  curbing tobacco advertising and the sale of alcohol led to significant
• 0:46
  growth of racing in the United States.
• 0:48
  Quinn Beekwilder is the assistant professor and coordinator of
• 0:51
  the motorsports management degree at Belmont Abbey College.
• 0:54
  With a decade of experience at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
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  And as one of the program's first graduates, he brings invaluable
• 1:00
  industry insights and addresses student concerns effectively.
• 1:03
  Thank you very much for having me back again here in Watkins Glen.
• 1:05
  Love coming back.
• 1:06
  On occasion, I find myself in the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
• 1:09
  I take my motorsport history class there after we do our NASCAR
• 1:13
  history segment in the class.
• 1:15
  And it's always a fantastic time.
• 1:17
  One of the things I noticed going through in part of their marketing structure,
• 1:22
  even part of the museum itself, is before there was speed, there was shine.
• 1:26
  There's not really a shiny car being represented in there.
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  There's a bottle of alcohol.
• 1:31
  That got me thinking.
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  It was like, oh, okay.
• 1:33
  So why was there shine before speed?
• 1:36
  What was the cause of this?
• 1:38
  And even in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, there are tales of Junior
• 1:41
  Johnson, who I got to know on occasion working with the Speedway.
• 1:44
  There's a display in the NASCAR Hall of Fame that is a still itself.
• 1:48
  So it's a moonshine still, it's set up.
• 1:50
  At first, Junior Johnson, they had approached him and said,
• 1:52
  Hey, we want to do a section that has a moonshine still in it.
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  Can you contribute anything?
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  And he said, Hold one sec.
• 1:59
  And he went ahead and built a still.
• 2:02
  He built a still and he sent it to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
• 2:05
  And he said, okay, here you go.
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  And they sort of turned around and they looked at him and
• 2:08
  said, how do we put it together?
• 2:09
  And he said, hold on.
• 2:11
  And so he came down and he assembled the thing himself.
• 2:13
  And to this day it's said that he claims that if as long as you light a fire under
• 2:17
  it and put the right ingredients in, it will produce alcohol at the other end.
• 2:19
  Fully functional still is what he delivered, per his knowledge of the
• 2:24
  product and his history with it.
• 2:26
  From this, before there was Speed, there was Shine, there also kind of comes
• 2:30
  about this era of the Winston Cup series.
• 2:33
  It was with us for 30 odd years.
• 2:35
  And why was the Winston part of NASCAR?
• 2:38
  There's two regulatory changes that I'm going to be talking about.
• 2:41
  Prohibition under the 18th Amendment and the 1970 Public
• 2:43
  Health Cigarette Smoking Act.
• 2:45
  And these two changes basically kind of posit that they were the
• 2:49
  reason that NASCAR was created.
• 2:53
  And the second one was how it was maintained and IMSA benefited from
• 2:57
  it as well during this time period.
• 2:58
  So let's get into it.
• 3:00
  Bootlegging and prohibition.
• 3:01
  The 18th amendment is ratified in 1920, and that makes it basically
• 3:05
  illegal for all alcohol to be sold, to be distributed, to be produced.
• 3:10
  Well, Americans like their alcohol, and even though it had become illegal, there
• 3:15
  was quite a need and want for alcohol.
• 3:18
  There were plenty of folks up in the mountains and foothills of North Carolina
• 3:22
  and Georgia and parts of the South that were willing to fulfill this need.
• 3:25
  They had already been producing alcohol on their own, typically
• 3:28
  on a small batch scale type.
• 3:30
  But once the nation was deprived of alcohol, their operations
• 3:34
  ramped up to quite a large level.
• 3:36
  And so, most of these hidden distilleries require wood, fire,
• 3:40
  heat, and time to produce alcohol.
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  And typically the smoke would be rising up, so revenuers or sheriffs were able
• 3:46
  to see this smoke and sort of pick out where hidden distilleries were.
• 3:50
  And so the majority of the time the production would take place
• 3:53
  at night or under the light of the moon is kind of where we get
• 3:56
  this whole term of moonshine from.
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  And so, once you actually create this product, and it's sitting
• 4:01
  there up in the mountains, and the thirsty folks down in Atlanta would
• 4:04
  really like their alcohol, you need to get it from point A to point B.
• 4:07
  And so, the original impetus, horse carts, large trucks, Model Ts, Model
• 4:13
  As, all recruited into this operation.
• 4:16
  And how initially it starts to kind of come down from
• 4:19
  the foothills to the cities.
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  But it was being noticed that more and more of these are easily intercepted.
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  They were caught.
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  So they needed to develop a much faster way of avoiding law enforcement.
• 4:31
  That really kind of leads into this whole modification program.
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  Cars and vehicles start to be modified.
• 4:37
  to become faster and faster.
• 4:38
  Raymond Parks was initially a bootlegger himself who earned enough money to
• 4:42
  open up his own garage and along with Red Voight, car mechanic who'd become
• 4:46
  quite influential in NASCAR later on, they would modify these vehicles for
• 4:51
  bootleggers and police officers alike.
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  Typically, it was said that the bootleggers got the better engines because
• 4:56
  they actually paid in cash and up front.
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  Whereas the sheriff's departments had to wait for the government checks to clear.
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  And so, you know, they got the lesser capable vehicles.
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  There ends up this whole entire cat and mouse happening from the foothills down.
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  Where the faster you could go, the more you could avoid law enforcement,
• 5:12
  and the quicker you could get paid.
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  And so nightly runs would be taking place between Dawsonville
• 5:17
  and North Wilkesboro down to the Atlanta area to supply this alcohol.
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  Also, it had to be handled in such a way that it wouldn't, End
• 5:24
  up with a bunch of broken glass all over the back of your car.
• 5:27
  And so right before prohibition kind of comes to a close, the Ford V8
• 5:31
  is introduced and the Ford V8 kind of changes the game for everyone.
• 5:35
  I'll just go ahead and read this quote.
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  The balance design created more torque, more horsepower, and
• 5:39
  more stability at high speeds.
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  The V8 beast and the coupe that it powered seemed tailor made for bootlegging.
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  Incredibly, a V8 coupe seemed to handle more nimbly the faster it went.
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  In the South, powerful V8s left many sheriff's deputies in the dust.
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  And once Whiskey Mechanics added extra carburetors to the engine and heavy
• 5:54
  tires and stronger suspension to the chassis, a Ford V8 could fly at 100 miles
• 5:58
  per hour across jagged mountain roads.
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  And I really don't think that last statement is hyperbole.
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  They pretty much were flying at around 100 miles per hour in the dark, over
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  mountain roads that weren't designed.
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  To really handle very aggressive driving, they were rutted, they
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  were pit, they were dirt roads.
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  And with these challenging conditions, develops this talent.
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  The ones that actually get it, the ones that understand how to maneuver through
• 6:20
  it, and use speed to their advantage, start to develop this talent of driving
• 6:24
  skills that they all of a sudden want to put to the test to other bootleggers.
• 6:29
  And so, casually, you have this development of bootleggers kind
• 6:33
  of getting together and racing and competing amongst themselves.
• 6:37
  And casually, a few people might show up.
• 6:39
  And some farmers who have some open fields and land say, You know what?
• 6:42
  Let's go ahead and plow some space.
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  I want to watch this too.
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  More people show up.
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  Promoters start coming out of the woodwork.
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  They start noticing that people are showing up at farmers fields.
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  So they might show up to a horse track or to a fairground.
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  And then a lot of these promoters were also of the unscrupulous nature.
• 6:57
  And so midway through a race, you could end up winning the event, but not having
• 7:01
  any money because the promoter took off with the ticket sales midway through.
• 7:05
  And so this is kind of the environment of the later 1930s,
• 7:08
  early 40s that is going on.
• 7:10
  And even though Prohibition has ended at this point, there was such a
• 7:13
  blanketing of distilleries, breweries, everything is just shut down, but
• 7:17
  the stills are still up and running.
• 7:19
  So they can still provide, before big industry can kind of come and take its
• 7:23
  place, the stills are still providing plenty of alcohol for the South,
• 7:26
  that bootlegging kind of continues on even past the end of Prohibition.
• 7:30
  And this is the time period too where Bill France starts out
• 7:34
  with his promotional ventures.
• 7:35
  Prior to the 1938 In 36 and 37, the AAA and the Elks Club had both run stock car
• 7:42
  races in Daytona to failure, but Bill France had seen success in both his 38
• 7:47
  and 39 series that he ran, and stock car racing was developing more and more
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  because prior to this, motorsports had really been kind of straight line racing.
• 7:57
  So from 1903 up until 1935, Daytona Beach was known as Land speed record territory.
• 8:03
  That's where Sir Malcolm Campbell's Bluebird finally set, I think,
• 8:07
  the last speed record in 35 was 276 miles per hour on average.
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  So these were incredible speeds, but they had reached their limit.
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  The sand could no longer hold it.
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  The speed trial folks picked up everything and then went for longer,
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  more flatter, more solid grounds, and they found the Bonneville Salt Flats.
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  And so that's why Bonneville Salt Flats, after this point, start picking
• 8:25
  up and having all the speed trials.
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  But the South is left with this kind of hole, but stock car racing
• 8:31
  is kind of filling this void.
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  And then Lakewood Speedway, or the Indianapolis Motor Speedway of the
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  South, right outside of Atlanta, holds its largest race in 1938 on Armistice
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  Day, with over 20, 000 fans showing up.
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  So there's this want and need for large scale events in stock car racing.
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  You know, we're starting to enter the 1940s.
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  World War II would come in the way as well, but there were so many racing
• 8:51
  organizations that were out at this point.
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  Some of these organizations, I'll read off some of their names, and you
• 8:55
  probably may never have heard of them.
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  Champion Stock Car Club, the Stock Car Racing Association, New England Stock
• 9:00
  Car Association, National Stock Car Racing Association, and more and more.
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  There was this want and need by drivers.
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  They wanted a legitimate, competitive, and rewarding series.
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  But they were so fragmented with one coming up and one going away, appearing
• 9:15
  and disappearing over a season.
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  This is the territory that Bill France kind of steps into.
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  His vision was really, he founded in 1947 the National Championship
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  Stock Car Circuit, or NCSCC.
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  This is really the precursor to NASCAR itself.
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  One of the novel features that he introduced was also
• 9:31
  rewarding drivers post season.
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  So actually, for competing through and earning points throughout the
• 9:37
  season, you could win a championship and receive a check afterwards.
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  Most promoters and most series creators at this time period were
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  just paying out at the race itself.
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  And so paying out for a championship in the end was kind
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  of like, why are you doing that?
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  Drivers appreciated that.
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  They also appreciated knowing how much they would be winning to
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  have an established point system.
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  Win so many points, earn so many dollars.
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  That's kind of the quote from Bill France at the top I have, is we started
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  this championship stock car racing organization because it was needed.
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  If the drivers and race teams follow this racing circuit, we as
• 10:06
  a group can become a stronger unit.
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  And so this kind of lays the groundwork.
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  This lays this trust, you know, that starts to build over the season.
• 10:13
  So he'd go on to complete about 40 odd races during this 1947.
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  Bonty Flock would be declared the champion.
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  The Flock family would be one of the first families in NASCAR.
• 10:22
  So he rides this momentum in 1947.
• 10:25
  And in December, he calls a meeting at the Streamline Hotel, along with Bill Tuttle,
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  who was a promoter from the New York area that he'd worked with earlier that season.
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  And they grow out a lot of the racing representatives from.
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  The South and the North to kind of come together to form this new unified series.
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  France truly believed that nothing stands still right here within our
• 10:44
  own group, rests the outcome of stock car racing in this country today.
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  A lot of the folks in the room may not have believed him because
• 10:50
  there had been so many series.
• 10:52
  That had come and gone, that they may have just come down for a weekend of drinks
• 10:56
  and food and have a good time and sign on to a dotted line and say, Okay, sure,
• 11:01
  let's start a new racing organization and not thought much about it.
• 11:04
  Bill France was the only candidate for president at the time and everyone duly
• 11:08
  voted him in without objection, but later on they kind of say, Were we bamboozled?
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  Why is he the president?
• 11:13
  This would lead later on to, you know, some controversies.
• 11:16
  But at the time, they decided to call themselves the National
• 11:19
  Stock Car Racing Association.
• 11:20
  Red Voight, though, had pointed out that it was already taken.
• 11:23
  So he suggested the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.
• 11:27
  Since one name had already been taken, they decided, yep, okay,
• 11:29
  we'll go ahead and take this.
• 11:31
  And NASCAR is created at that point.
• 11:33
  Kind of go back to the domino scenario.
• 11:35
  The need for illegal alcohol to be transported to other areas creates
• 11:38
  the need for bootleggers, who develop skills, who then want to compete.
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  The more and more they compete, they want more legitimacy themselves, leading
• 11:45
  to sanctioning bodies being created and falling away, and then NASCAR
• 11:49
  to kind of come out of the woodwork to kind of stand on top of the rest.
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  So, that's why I think that without prohibition, there
• 11:55
  couldn't have been NASCAR.
• 11:57
  And the next regulatory issue that I want to talk about was really the 1970
• 12:01
  Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act.
• 12:03
  It was an attack by the U.
• 12:04
  S.
• 12:04
  government to prevent advertising on television and radio of cigarette ads.
• 12:08
  Now you might not think that that's that big of a deal,
• 12:11
  one or two ads here and there.
• 12:13
  It's an adult's decision whether or not to pick up cigarettes and start smoking.
• 12:16
  Well, they were spending roughly 80 percent of their entire budget
• 12:20
  of the cigarette industry as a whole was being spent on TV ads.
• 12:24
  Spending only 150 million dollars doesn't sound like much, but if you adjust for
• 12:28
  inflation, this is over a billion dollars in advertising on television alone.
• 12:32
  And then if we go back even further, because we're so used to cable
• 12:34
  television streaming networks, there were only three major networks.
• 12:38
  It was ABC, NBC, and CBS.
• 12:40
  And so three television stations had a billion dollars worth of cigarette
• 12:44
  advertising on them throughout the year.
• 12:46
  That's a lot of cigarette advertising.
• 12:48
  And then even some of these ads I pulled, it was of the vein of more
• 12:52
  doctors smoke camels and also the Flintstones basically go through
• 12:55
  and astound the benefits of smoking smooth, filtered Winston cigarettes.
• 12:59
  So, you know, when you have major cartoon characters
• 13:02
  telling you to smoke cigarettes.
• 13:04
  Maybe we've reached a point.
• 13:05
  With this being said, the bill is signed into law April of 1970.
• 13:09
  And it actually goes into effect January 2nd of 1971, just in
• 13:13
  time for the NASCAR season.
• 13:15
  Since the writing was kind of on the wall, the bill had been signed by Nixon.
• 13:18
  Junior Johnson steps back into the picture.
• 13:20
  This time, a lot of the major car manufacturers were starting to step away.
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  Ford, Dodge, Chrysler.
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  A lot of their major factory teams were kind of set back.
• 13:28
  Some of the engineering support was being pulled away.
• 13:30
  And so it was leaving this hole of finance.
• 13:33
  And so Junior Johnson said, well, you know what?
• 13:35
  I'm gonna go approach R.
• 13:36
  J.
• 13:36
  Reynolds.
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  They're just up the road.
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  They're based in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
• 13:39
  And Junior was around the Charlotte area.
• 13:41
  And so he just took the hour and a half drive up, proposed that, how about R.
• 13:45
  J.
• 13:45
  Reynolds pays me 200, 000 for sponsorship?
• 13:48
  That sounds good.
• 13:49
  Keep my team going.
• 13:50
  And they basically turned to him and said, well, what can you do
• 13:51
  with several million dollars?
• 13:53
  And he said, sponsorship doesn't usually work that way.
• 13:56
  You ask me for one amount, and you 10, 10 million times they get back to me.
• 14:00
  I'm not used to this.
• 14:01
  After he gets over the initial shock, he realizes that even
• 14:04
  with that amount of money, he wouldn't be able to do it justice.
• 14:07
  He wouldn't be able to do what RJ Reynolds wanted to do.
• 14:09
  And so he introduced RJ Reynolds, Ralph Seagraves, who would go on
• 14:12
  to manage the majority of this promotion and oversee it really.
• 14:16
  And Bill Franz, Jr.
• 14:17
  So after multiple meetings, they came out and the first ever title
• 14:20
  sponsorship for NASCAR is created.
• 14:22
  The NASCAR Wins and Cup Series.
• 14:24
  This new standard for commercial partnership in motorsports is
• 14:27
  kind of founded because tobacco needed to move their money out
• 14:31
  of TV and into something else.
• 14:33
  That next year's spending of a billion dollars was already slated, and so
• 14:37
  they needed to put it somewhere.
• 14:38
  NASCAR seemed to fit the bill.
• 14:40
  With this, they redirect the majority of their budgets, but they also redirect
• 14:44
  a huge majority of their expertise.
• 14:46
  NASCAR at this point was a regional sport, had some national
• 14:49
  attention here and there.
• 14:51
  It was talked about, but it really didn't have much television coverage.
• 14:54
  Didn't have much press coverage and wasn't known outside of
• 14:57
  the South to a great extent.
• 14:59
  And so Winston basically all of a sudden brings, almost takes.
• 15:03
  NASCAR out of the Model T and puts it in the Ford V8 and
• 15:06
  just sends it down the road.
• 15:08
  And they start rocketing down with billboards and media coverage.
• 15:12
  And the thing called a press conference.
• 15:14
  Actually making drivers available for media interactions
• 15:17
  through telephone calls.
• 15:18
  Flying media in from major organizations to a race to actually cover said race.
• 15:23
  They pay for track improvement.
• 15:25
  They tell them to move their award banquet basically to the
• 15:28
  New York City's Waldorf Astoria.
• 15:29
  Anything at this point that happens in New York is in national news.
• 15:33
  They also direct their sport marketing enterprise to become
• 15:35
  the unofficial PR hub for NASCAR.
• 15:38
  So they take it pretty much away from the one guy who might have been talking
• 15:41
  to the press after the race, to all of a sudden a New York PR group that is
• 15:44
  now promoting everything about NASCAR.
• 15:47
  Along with this, there do come some challenges.
• 15:49
  RJ Reynolds is really looking to nationalize NASCAR looking to see how
• 15:54
  they can take this regional series and make it nationally recognizable
• 15:58
  and to make our investment worthwhile so that we get the most exposure in
• 16:02
  front of the United States as we can.
• 16:04
  As opposed to what they used to get with paying roughly a
• 16:07
  billion a year for TV coverage.
• 16:09
  They suggest different improvements.
• 16:11
  Racing schedules reduced dramatically from 48 races down
• 16:14
  to about 31 races within a year.
• 16:16
  A lot of the smaller venues, 150 mile races, 200 mile races are all replaced.
• 16:20
  400, 500 mile races are taking place.
• 16:23
  The idea of high profile events are introduced to get people
• 16:27
  really excited on a national level.
• 16:29
  The Winston Million, the Winston or the All Star race.
• 16:32
  are introduced during this time period as well.
• 16:34
  So the Winston Million was basically a promotional idea.
• 16:36
  It's like, how can we get more people entertained or engaged with NASCAR racing?
• 16:41
  Well, what if we give a million dollars to the one driver who wins
• 16:44
  three of the four hardest races?
• 16:45
  Okay, sure.
• 16:46
  You know, is that possible?
• 16:47
  And most officials and most drivers are like, nah, it's not possible.
• 16:51
  Okay.
• 16:51
  Well, that sounds like an even better bet.
• 16:52
  We can say we're going to give them a million dollars.
• 16:55
  And if no one wins it, then fantastic.
• 16:56
  Perfect.
• 16:57
  And so what are these races?
• 16:58
  Okay.
• 16:58
  It's going to be the Daytona 500.
• 17:00
  It's going to be Talladega.
• 17:01
  It's going to be a Charlotte 600 and it's going to be Darlington.
• 17:03
  Wouldn't you know it?
• 17:04
  They didn't take out really any liability type insurance or
• 17:07
  contest insurance on this thing.
• 17:09
  And Bill Elliot wins it in the first year.
• 17:12
  Lo and behold, the impossible happens.
• 17:14
  And so they're on the hook for the full million.
• 17:17
  You know, there wasn't any insurance companies involved
• 17:19
  that prized indemnification or anything of that nature.
• 17:21
  But yeah, that was the very first year that they introduced the program,
• 17:24
  Billy Elliot wins it, and they sure indemnified that thing afterwards.
• 17:27
  But it wouldn't be until 1997, where a fresh faced Jeff Gordon would
• 17:31
  actually win the final Winston Million.
• 17:33
  That's a long time to go without having winners.
• 17:35
  It did make sense when they initially did it, but they're
• 17:37
  like, shoot, you got to pay this.
• 17:38
  So lessons learned, but it did capture the national attention.
• 17:42
  So, I mean, you know, we, even to this day, you know, you know, famous
• 17:44
  awesome bill from Dawsonville comes out of the woodwork every now and
• 17:47
  then with this, they invest millions in the tracks to improve grandstands.
• 17:51
  They actually, they were known to have saved several tracks from bankruptcy,
• 17:54
  paying off some bills, red and white paint all of a sudden becomes the normal
• 17:58
  paint for all these race facilities.
• 18:00
  Winston was painted every hundred yards down the backstretch stripes to
• 18:03
  induce when they actually got on TV.
• 18:05
  So the stripes would look faster as the cars are moving.
• 18:07
  You know, is this whole kind of mindset of raising the bar.
• 18:11
  All these improvements that go along, more people are coming
• 18:14
  out watching these events.
• 18:15
  Television is catching on.
• 18:16
  So they go from having just recorded segments.
• 18:19
  On worldwide sport to having the start of the race to the end of the race.
• 18:23
  Cutting in to finally CBS taking the leap in 1979 for the first flag
• 18:28
  to flag broadcast, I have coverage.
• 18:29
  The Daytona 500, which ended in a very dramatic finish, a fight
• 18:33
  happening in the back stretch.
• 18:34
  This all happened in front of millions of people.
• 18:37
  Because there coincidentally happened to be a blizzard that limited
• 18:40
  everyone's ability to leave their house and they're stuck around the TV.
• 18:43
  And again, there are only three TV stations to choose from.
• 18:46
  And if your choices are one, two or three, and one of those has a race on, you're
• 18:50
  going to watch the thing with the race.
• 18:52
  That viewership record actually wasn't broken until about the 2010s.
• 18:55
  So that was a phenomenal catch for NASCAR with this 1979 race to
• 19:00
  entice so many people to become interested in the series itself.
• 19:04
  And with Winston's investment into the series, they're said to have
• 19:09
  invested around 60 million annually.
• 19:11
  With inflation, of course, that number grows quite exponentially, so
• 19:14
  it's a lot of multiple millions of dollars being invested in to tracks,
• 19:17
  to personnel, but it gave a steady base that they could operate off of.
• 19:20
  And the prize money, as you can see, rapidly increased in
• 19:24
  a fairly short amount of time.
• 19:26
  1964, if you won the 500, the prize pool itself was only 100, 000.
• 19:31
  By 74, it was 250, 000.
• 19:33
  By 79, it was 538, 000.
• 19:35
  And by 85, it was well over a million dollars.
• 19:37
  So prize pools started to increase drastically.
• 19:40
  With this long term investment that Winston had made into the sport was
• 19:44
  just paying off and drivers were starting to reap the benefits of it
• 19:48
  and also on a national scale being established as the premier stock car
• 19:52
  racing organization that it is today.
• 19:54
  Not to be outdone, but around the same time period, IMSA
• 19:57
  benefits from this as well.
• 19:58
  So, a brief recap of IMSA's creation.
• 20:01
  John Bishop had worked with the SEC in parted ways.
• 20:04
  Bill France had considered starting a new sports car sanctioning body,
• 20:08
  and he called up John Bishop.
• 20:09
  He said, why don't you come down to Daytona?
• 20:10
  Let's talk about it.
• 20:11
  I'd hate for your experience to go to waste.
• 20:13
  And once they got together and they talked and Bill France said, I'll
• 20:16
  make a large mutual investment.
• 20:18
  Let's get this off the ground and running.
• 20:19
  So the International Motorsports Association was founded in
• 20:22
  1969 with its first emphasis on Formula Fords and Formula Vs.
• 20:26
  Bill France ended up owning 75 percent initially of IMSA.
• 20:29
  That was paid off by John Bishop by 1976 or so.
• 20:33
  He had paid off all of France's investments.
• 20:35
  And so he owned it himself, but the initial IMSA suffered from a lot of
• 20:39
  bad press, some accidents, and only 500 people showing up to Talladega.
• 20:43
  Which would be really awkward to see only 500 people at a race at Talladega.
• 20:47
  With that being said, there was a refocus on sports cars.
• 20:51
  So by 1970, the Formula Vs and Formula Fords kind of were pulled
• 20:55
  a little bit back, and sports cars were going to be the next big thing.
• 20:58
  Now, this was not actually a Bill France introducing R.
• 21:01
  J.
• 21:01
  Reynolds.
• 21:02
  to John Bishop.
• 21:03
  This was kind of just a natural progression.
• 21:04
  I couldn't really find any proof that one introduced the
• 21:06
  other, but it happened to be R.
• 21:08
  J.
• 21:08
  Reynolds as well and through their Camel brand.
• 21:10
  And through their Camel brand in 1972, Camel comes in and basically provides
• 21:15
  that critical funding that IMSA needed to really gain eyeballs on the racetrack.
• 21:20
  And so there's a very quick growth and all of a sudden credibility.
• 21:24
  If I said IMSA GT, and it's a series that started last year, what's that?
• 21:29
  But if you say Camel GT, it's like, well, I know Camel
• 21:30
  cigarettes, and they're behind it.
• 21:32
  Well, it must be something.
• 21:33
  So let me at least take a look at it.
• 21:34
  Just through that, the race calendars open up, more tracks kind of open up, and
• 21:38
  it will accept an IMSA race to appear.
• 21:41
  Top talent comes out of the woodworks.
• 21:43
  The manufacturers come out once the Camel GTP prototype classes
• 21:46
  come out from Porsche, Jaguar, Nissan, Toyota, Lola, Lotus.
• 21:50
  So many manufacturers kind of come out of the woodwork.
• 21:52
  So all the different classes that are introduced throughout the 70s and
• 21:55
  80s, they just kind of ride this wave.
• 21:58
  With that being said, there is this whole idea that the public
• 22:02
  needs protecting from cigarettes.
• 22:03
  That was the original policy attempt, to take eyeballs off cigarettes
• 22:08
  and take it off television.
• 22:09
  It had the unintended consequence of shifting everything to motorsports.
• 22:13
  Something that was in front of people's eyeballs already, and through the
• 22:17
  influx of cash from these companies, got in front of even more eyeballs,
• 22:22
  and just spread itself out even more across the country than it had
• 22:25
  originally even been intended to.
• 22:27
  Yep.
• 22:27
  They basically created this symbiotic relationship where the success of
• 22:31
  one proved the success of the other.
• 22:33
  With the funds and the advertising, dragged motorsports along with it, it
• 22:37
  got better cars, it got better talent, it got better racing, it just became a
• 22:41
  better sporting organization through IMSA and through NASCAR itself, and you had a
• 22:46
  better product to put out on the track.
• 22:48
  And really, that's kind of what I wanted to say.
• 22:51
  Thank you.
• 22:57
  When did this all end?
• 23:00
  A year or two that this all actually ended?
• 23:02
  Right around 1998, there was another act that basically came into vault,
• 23:06
  basically prevented cigarette advertising and sporting events.
• 23:10
  And so that's when a lot of this kind of went away.
• 23:13
  Camel cigarettes kind of dipped out around 93, 94 or so.
• 23:16
  So they were a little bit earlier.
• 23:17
  And then Winston was until about 2003 that they left.
• 23:21
  It was basically another government regulation that kind of stepped in
• 23:23
  and said, No, you can't have this giant platform to advertise on.
• 23:27
  Which they kind of caused in the first place.
• 23:29
  Did any of the bootleggers turn into major alcohol manufacturers?
• 23:35
  You mentioned that the large corporations eventually took
• 23:39
  that business away from them.
• 23:41
  But did they themselves develop into a major corporation?
• 23:44
  The type of alcohol that was produced was of Very strong,
• 23:48
  referred to as white lightning.
• 23:50
  Funny you should mention, Junior Johnson actually had his own brand, Midnight Moon.
• 23:53
  He launched himself and basically made legal moonshine and then packaged and
• 23:58
  paid the tax stamp on later in life.
• 23:59
  And so it kind of took his historical connections to it and
• 24:02
  just used it as a marketing ploy.
• 24:03
  But it was still just a straight in a mason jar, though.
• 24:06
  He never tried to develop.
• 24:07
  No, no, he went on, well, his father was known to have been the largest east
• 24:13
  coast bust of moonshine on record at the time when his family farm was impounded
• 24:18
  and all the alcohol was taken out.
• 24:19
  He himself was arrested for distilling and spent a year and a half or so in
• 24:23
  federal penitentiary, which Ronald Reagan actually years later pardoned him for.
• 24:27
  Got that off his record later on, but no, that was about the only one that I
• 24:29
  kind of went and kind of wrote it on out.
• 24:31
  Most of them kind of got out of the business or passed away because of it.
• 24:34
  I'm curious how your presentation interfaces with the first one we saw
• 24:37
  this morning about the Winston cup West and what that kind of transition from
• 24:42
  a Southern sport to a national sport looked like under Winston sponsorship.
• 24:46
  My main focus was more on the national level.
• 24:47
  So I was actually really intrigued by Dan's presentation this morning
• 24:50
  of the Winston West series itself.
• 24:52
  But I believe that with Winston's money, there was able to be a.
• 24:56
  Secondary Western series, you know, you had the development of sub
• 25:00
  series below NASCAR itself to be a feeder into the main series later on.
• 25:04
  And you have much more insight since your family was involved in it.
• 25:08
  They certainly spent more money and they wanted to boost the West Coast series,
• 25:13
  so they allotted X amount of dollars.
• 25:16
  Yeah, that's perfectly fine because like I said, mine was strictly research on
• 25:24
  the national level and not subcategory.
• 25:26
  So in the late 1950s, there was a Robert Mitchum film, Thunder Road,
• 25:30
  about moonshiners and bootleggers.
• 25:32
  I was wondering if you knew anything or anybody had any speculation about
• 25:35
  how that would impact NASCAR, because it was, for a lot of America, it was
• 25:39
  an introduction to Appalachian culture.
• 25:42
  And there was a whole different side of America's social structure
• 25:46
  that was popularized by that film.
• 25:48
  Yeah, and actually NASCAR, even at its very beginnings, once in the Late
• 25:52
  forties, early fifties, never really wanted to be associated with bootlegging.
• 25:56
  So in its original emphasis, when it was trying to make a name for itself
• 25:59
  and become popular before Winston stepped in, they pretty much denied
• 26:03
  that there were any kind of criminal activities or anything that kind of
• 26:05
  inspired this was all the France's idea.
• 26:08
  And, you know, they all came together in the spirit of competition to make
• 26:10
  this series and, you know, become legal and legitimate, you know,
• 26:13
  and clean as a whistle basically.
• 26:15
  And so it wasn't until mid two thousands or, you know, 2010s,
• 26:18
  this acceptance Okay, fine.
• 26:20
  It did happen.
• 26:21
  A lot of these bootleggers, a lot of the technology that kind of went into it,
• 26:25
  the skills learned on the back roads, going into the dirt tracks, going into
• 26:29
  the major racing events, the families that got their start from that Raymond
• 26:32
  parks was one of the first multi car team owners at the very start of NASCAR.
• 26:36
  All his money came from slot machines, gambling and running alcohol into Atlanta.
• 26:41
  And that's another reason that Charlotte became a hub for
• 26:44
  NASCAR is that Atlanta and their.
• 26:47
  The rich people of Atlanta and the religious leaders of
• 26:49
  Atlanta didn't want criminality associated and running on Sundays.
• 26:52
  And so they basically forced a lot of the local government plus the police
• 26:56
  to arrest these drivers because they knew they're racing at Lakewood.
• 27:00
  They knew they were going to be there.
• 27:01
  You know, they were kind of just snubbing their nose at society
• 27:04
  and they wouldn't stand for it.
• 27:05
  But Charlotte was like, Come on down.
• 27:08
  They were fine with it.
• 27:09
  You know, so that's kind of why I don't have Atlanta as the kind of like the
• 27:12
  hub for NASCAR as opposed to Charlotte.
• 27:15
  All right, Quinn, our very active live streamers.
• 27:18
  First of all, Mark Howell said, stop dealing with thunder.
• 27:22
  Ash Vandalay writes, We see constant complaints online that
• 27:26
  NASCAR isn't like it used to be.
• 27:28
  Would we say that's because of the lack of money to pump into
• 27:31
  various marketing efforts or maybe an accumulation of things?
• 27:35
  Yeah, I'd say it's a accumulation of things.
• 27:37
  This is my opinion.
• 27:38
  With the rise of NASCAR, it was throughout the 70s and even into the early 2000s.
• 27:42
  And then all of a sudden we see this kind of switch over.
• 27:44
  Nextel Cup, all of a sudden tech is involved.
• 27:46
  And they become the series sponsor, which then switches
• 27:48
  into Sprint because of a buyout.
• 27:50
  The early 2000s, Ots and of the two thousands see this enormous influx.
• 27:55
  It's almost like everyone's tripping over themselves to invest
• 27:58
  tens of millions of dollars in sponsorship money into these races.
• 28:01
  It seemed to have almost been worked up to a fever pitch and then everyone
• 28:05
  started investing and then 2008 hit.
• 28:08
  And everyone stops investing pullbacks on sponsorships.
• 28:11
  You go from full seasons, having the exact same car sponsored by Home Depot
• 28:16
  and Lowe's and M& Ms and, you know, authentics is one of the last remaining
• 28:20
  ones right now, but you know, the single company sponsors for an entire season
• 28:25
  just seemed to disappear overnight facilities that had constantly relied on.
• 28:30
  Full seats and huge waiting lists to get into the Bristol night race
• 28:34
  just all of a sudden vanished.
• 28:36
  And there were tickets available, whereas for years they've been
• 28:38
  just, you know, waiting lists and season ticket holders only.
• 28:41
  There's been an adjustment.
• 28:42
  I mean, there's been ups and downs in every sport.
• 28:44
  We're correcting back out, but to a more sustainable where we're
• 28:48
  at right now in NASCAR, but what the future holds, we'll see.
• 28:51
  I think it is a fascinating business story of how this is all evolved, but have
• 28:55
  you been to the NASCAR R and D center?
• 28:56
  I've been down once or twice.
• 28:58
  Inside.
• 28:59
  Yeah, inside.
• 28:59
  After you get past the front desk area off to the right, that large room.
• 29:03
  Yeah.
• 29:04
  That sign that's on, have you seen what's literally written on the wall?
• 29:08
  Okay, I've missed that one.
• 29:08
  It's a quote from Bill France at the meeting in the formation of NASCAR.
• 29:13
  Yeah.
• 29:13
  It makes reference to, we can do the same thing, but better than those is.
• 29:19
  Guys in Indianapolis, that that was like a driving, motivating force.
• 29:23
  And I don't know how accurate that is, but it's up on the wall at the R& D
• 29:27
  center, so I think it's probably true.
• 29:28
  So that does take a little bit away from, you know, I was trying
• 29:30
  to structure it more towards like prohibition, but yes, there was a big
• 29:34
  influx fight, there have been tales and how true they are or not of the.
• 29:37
  Bill France being at Indianapolis or so.
• 29:40
  AAA, the sanctioning body, kind of finding out that he was even in
• 29:42
  the garages and going, Oh, he's not supposed to be here and kicking him out.
• 29:46
  Even at times he had tried to approach them or even had considered
• 29:49
  kind of teaming up to like, Hey, AAA, you've got this experience.
• 29:52
  How about I come in as your stock car representative?
• 29:54
  And we kind of run this stock car series together.
• 29:56
  And just AAA was having.
• 29:58
  None of it.
• 29:59
  They just kind of thumbed their noses at it.
• 30:01
  They just basically like a third rate racing series for the
• 30:03
  working class is basically how they thought of stock car racing.
• 30:06
  Eventually they would turn around and start trying their own stock
• 30:09
  car racing series once they saw that something was occurring and happening
• 30:13
  after France had established NASCAR.
• 30:14
  It was too little too late.
• 30:16
  Bill was Very authoritative of if you went to another series, you lost your
• 30:19
  points, blackballed and not accepted back.
• 30:22
  And there are all sorts of consequences.
• 30:23
  They stuck to pretty firmly.
• 30:25
  We ruled NASCAR quite with an iron fist in one hand.
• 30:28
  If you hadn't have, I don't think it would have, if it was up there,
• 30:30
  I figured it had to be at least an accurate quote in a driving force.
• 30:34
  And then my only little comment was.
• 30:36
  When it was the Camel Series, and I just remember I was going to Brainerd to race
• 30:39
  in the IMSA race there, and I was supposed to go to the media center, and I was late.
• 30:43
  I got in a rental car, I was in this little escort with my foot totally to
• 30:46
  the floor trying to get there in time.
• 30:48
  You know, just could imagine in a rental car just hauling butt, and all of a
• 30:50
  sudden I look up and I see this huge billboard, Camel GT, where a man belongs.
• 30:55
  And all of a sudden, I was like, what the hell am I working
• 30:57
  so hard to get there for?
• 30:59
  This is so funny.
• 31:00
  The other was that, you know how with Marlboro, with their sponsorship, when
• 31:04
  they got pulled because of the law, right?
• 31:06
  But then I think Penske kept the color scheme so that you really didn't even
• 31:10
  miss that Marlboro wasn't on there.
• 31:12
  I mean, it's just interesting visually how the identification can carry forward
• 31:15
  even if the letters aren't there.
• 31:17
  Welcome back to 2026, or 2023.
• 31:19
  European regulation little forefront, but yes, mission winnow is also one
• 31:24
  of those fun things that we're going to be talking about, but that goes
• 31:26
  back to a nonsensical, what is it type company that's sort of funded
• 31:30
  by, and it's just a, the shape of it at speed looks like a Marlboro pack.
• 31:34
  It's kind of fun.
• 31:35
  Mark Howe writes, how much has the use of wraps promoted slash enabled
• 31:39
  the rash of one off sponsors?
• 31:41
  Gosh, it's really helped.
• 31:43
  But I think it's also helped to the extent of a really good boon to the
• 31:46
  industry, because for example, Coca Cola has many variations of Coca Cola, Diet
• 31:50
  Coke, Coke Zero, Cherry Coke, Pumpkin Coke, I'm sure will come out someday.
• 31:54
  Oreos and Coke came out not that long ago, which is disgusting.
• 31:57
  But regardless of that, these single car wraps can be utilized to promote.
• 32:01
  Every single product line that a major corporation might have.
• 32:05
  So it's quite nice that this technology exists if you do pitch a corporation.
• 32:10
  Not only is it Coca Cola being sold, but you can go ahead and weekly
• 32:14
  switch out to your next product line or your next marketing innovation.
• 32:19
  That you want to promote to the nation and you can make it even regional.
• 32:21
  If you had a particular product that sells better in one spot or the other,
• 32:24
  you know, if you had a conglomerate of supermarkets, I mean, you know,
• 32:27
  you could change it out from what area you're in, which is that particular
• 32:30
  supermarket or convenience store that you might be sponsored by in that effect.
• 32:34
  I, you know, I do think it's a quite nice to have.
• 32:36
  It wasn't just cigarettes.
• 32:37
  It was chewing tobacco.
• 32:39
  Copenhagen and Skoll were major players in NASCAR and IndyCar.
• 32:44
  They had the Skoll Motorsports Report that was coast to coast on radio.
• 32:47
  Good old Skoll Bandit.
• 32:48
  Yep.
• 32:49
  Yep.
• 32:49
  Affect a lot of different things.
• 32:51
  Yeah, that was very true.
• 32:52
  Yeah.
• 32:52
  On the team level, there were many more brands that kind of got involved, but
• 32:56
  I think Winston with its exclusivity as a top sponsor squashed a lot of the
• 33:00
  smaller companies from being able to kind of do the single car sponsorships up.
• 33:04
  Quinn, that was terrific.
• 33:05
  Thank you very much.
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