Product Description

From its raw beginnings on Southern dirt tracks, NASCAR smacked of a slightly depraved spectacle, as if nothing but trouble could come from the unbridled locomotion of a V8 engine. By the time NASCAR roared into the twenty-first century, it had grown into a billion-dollar sports and marketing colossus, its races attended by hundreds of thousands of fans on any given weekend from mid-February through mid-November, watched on television by the second-largest viewing audience in sports, and bankrolled by the marketing largesse of the Fortune 500’s elite.

One Helluva Ride, a full-throttle account of the rise and reign of NASCAR nation, is award-winning motorsports reporter Liz Clarke’s chronicle of how stock car racing exploded from regional obsession to national phenomenon. In covering the sport for more than fifteen years, Clarke has developed a strong rapport with NASCAR’s drivers, team owners, and hard-core fans. Through her reporting and analysis, we get to know the public and private sides of NASCAR’s most iconic figures, including seven-time champion Richard Petty, who set the standard for treating fans with respect, and the late Dale Earnhardt, whose brazen, bullying tactics wreaked havoc on the track, but whose heart was as big as Daytona’s infield.

The sports world stopped in its tracks the day Earnhardt was killed on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Some feared that NASCAR’s soul would die with him. But it has raced on, steered by visionary promoters, the all-controlling France family (who founded the sport), and, above all, the next generation of drivers to stir fans’ passions: Dale Earnhardt, Jr., son of the NASCAR legend and now, like his father before him, the circuit’s most popular driver; Jeff Gordon, the beloved but oft-maligned outsider, bred from the cradle to be NASCAR’s winningest modern champion; and Kasey Kahne, a reluctant heartthrob whose confidence derives entirely from an accelerator pedal. Clarke also brings us inside NASCAR’s most triumphant and tragic dynasties: the Pettys, the Earnhardts, and the Allisons–and reveals how faith, family, and a deep-seated love of their sport helps them cope with grief and loss.

Clarke shows NASCAR to be at a crossroads. In pursuit of a broader audience, NASCAR has severed its sponsorship ties to Big Tobacco, abandoned racetracks in small markets in favor of speedways near glitzy major cities, and welcomed Japan’s Toyota into a sport traditionally restricted to American-made sedans. As NASCAR races toward mass appeal, some suggest it is leaving its roots behind. To others, it is boldly extending its reach from the Southern workingman to every man, woman, and child in the world.

Whether you’re one of the die-hard NASCAR faithful or just a casual follower, nobody brings you closer to the sport and business of big-time stock car racing than Liz Clarke. This book, like the phenomenon it profiles, really is One Helluva Ride.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209792 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-12
• Released on: 2008-02-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
Advance praise for One Helluva Ride

“I’ve known Liz Clarke for a long time. She’s one of the most respected writers out there. One Helluva Ride gets off to an entertaining start, and it describes the 2001 Daytona 500 just as I remember it–a race that went from the all-time high of my life, coming back from tearing up the car and finishing third, to the all-time low of losing one of my best friends, Dale Earnhardt.”
–Rusty Wallace, 1989 NASCAR champion and ESPN commentator

“You can’t pretend to have a full-scale discussion about sports anymore without understanding NASCAR. One Helluva Ride is an entertaining, literate look at where the sport has been and where it’s going.”
–Michael Wilbon, Washington Post columnist and co-host of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption”

“From the moonshiners of the Southern mountains to Madison Avenue, Liz Clarke takes us into the very soul of NASCAR. Her insightful mind and years of covering stock car racing make this book an absolute read for anyone even faintly curious about this phenomenon.”
–H. A. “Humpy” Wheeler, veteran NASCAR promoter and president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway

“Liz Clarke does a great job of telling the story of how NASCAR has changed since I was driver.”
–Robert Glen “Junior” Johnson, legendary NASCAR racer


From the Hardcover edition.

Review
Advance praise for One Helluva Ride

“I’ve known Liz Clarke for a long time. She’s one of the most respected writers out there. One Helluva Ride gets off to an entertaining start, and it describes the 2001 Daytona 500 just as I remember it–a race that went from the all-time high of my life, coming back from tearing up the car and finishing third, to the all-time low of losing one of my best friends, Dale Earnhardt.”
–Rusty Wallace, 1989 NASCAR champion and ESPN commentator

“You can’t pretend to have a full-scale discussion about sports anymore without understanding NASCAR. One Helluva Ride is an entertaining, literate look at where the sport has been and where it’s going.”
–Michael Wilbon, Washington Post columnist and co-host of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption”

“From the moonshiners of the Southern mountains to Madison Avenue, Liz Clarke takes us into the very soul of NASCAR. Her insightful mind and years of covering stock car racing make this book an absolute read for anyone even faintly curious about this phenomenon.”
–H. A. “Humpy” Wheeler, veteran NASCAR promoter and president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway

“Liz Clarke does a great job of telling the story of how NASCAR has changed since I was driver.”
–Robert Glen “Junior” Johnson, legendary NASCAR racer

About the Author
A sportswriter for The Washington Post, Liz Clarke has also covered NASCAR for USA Today, The Charlotte Observer, and The Dallas Morning News, and was twice honored with the Russ Catlin award for excellence in motorsports journalism. She spent four seasons as a Post beat writer on the Washington Redskins and has written extensively about the Olympics, tennis, and college sports. A graduate of Barnard College, she lives in Washington, D.C., with her beloved Lab, Rusty.

Customer Reviews

A winning story, well told
Take a good look at Liz Clarke's new book, One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation. You don't have to know auto racing to relate to NASCAR's populist, dirt-track roots, its self-made heroes and multibillion-dollar marketing revolution. If you're already a fan, you'll find fresh insights and up-close portraits of the sport's most compelling personalities. If you're on the fence, climb over: Follow the money, meet the stars, get inside the rivalries and tragedies that pull them together and push them apart.

Clarke knows sports on the world stage. She has covered the NFL, the World Cup, Wimbledon and the Olympics from Sydney to Salt Lake to Athens and the Italian Alps. In 15 years of writing for the Charlotte Observer, the Dallas Morning News, USA Today and, now, the Washington Post, she has also become an authority on NASCAR, a truly American sports phenomenon.

If you can't get past comparing strawberries and cream at Wimbledon's Centre Court to chicken bones at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, you're missing a great story. Clarke's colleague Michael Wilbon, the Post columnist and co-host of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, says it well: "You can't pretend to have a full-scale discussion of sports anymore without understanding NASCAR."

Clarke is an especially observant guide. As a reporter, she didn't choose to write about NASCAR; she knew almost nothing about racing when she was sent to cover her first speedway practice in Charlotte in 1991. As she got to know the drivers, she found them more accessible and interesting than many of the arrogant athletes in pro sports. It was clear that the drivers' personalities, not their 3,400-pound cars, were the sport's real drawing cards.

NASCAR has outgrown clichés about stock car racing and its tens of millions of die-hard fans. Madison Avenue's embrace is hastening change. The small Southern tracks that launched the sport are closing, with new speedways popping up in southern California, Las Vegas, Chicago and Kansas City. International drivers, including Colombia's Juan Pablo Montoya and Scotland's Dario Franchitti, are pulling into NASCAR garages.

In One Helluva Ride, Clarke charts NASCAR's rise with energy and expertise. The book profits tremendously from the trust and respect she earned from such racing icons as Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt. The big picture is clear, but details set the book apart. Readers learn the secret of Petty's elaborate autograph, start a day at Earnhardt's farm with a Sundrop soda and a sausage biscuit, watch his fatal crash from the press box at Daytona in 2001.

[...]

One Helluva NASCAR Book
For either a veteran fan or a newbie, there is a ton of information and no small amount of local color and opinion in One Helluva Ride. This "Back to Basics" year for NASCAR is the perfect time to check out this very informative and roots respecting book by Liz Clarke.

It is clear from her reporting she has developed strong and trusting relationships with a range of drivers, owners and mechanics, from the pioneers and early heroes to today's mega stars of this growing and changing sport. (The foreword is written by Richard Petty.) The book's ambitious trajectory is nicely broken down into insightful biographical sketches and fact filled discussions of major changes in the sport's history.

She navigates the shoal waters of NASCAR's founding, drivers schooled in dirt road high speed tactics hauling loads of moonshine liquor, to the high water marks of today's sport peopled with MBAs and image consultants teaching lads who were driving on dirt tracks in the mid west, how to deal with a stage second only to the NFL in television coverage.

This is a good read.

Fast-paced and fun
With equal parts sports history, business strategy and social commentary, Clarke tracks the rise of NASCAR by focusing on the personalities that made (and continue to make) the sport grow.

If you're looking for a book that recaps significant races or focuses on racing strategy, this isn't it. However, if you want to walk away with the feeling that you've spent an afternoon on Richard Petty's front porch chatting over a few Cheerwines, then you'll thoroughly enjoy this book. Clarke has clearly invested much of herself in NASCAR and the sport has repaid the debt with the gift of its personalities which Clarke presents here as very few could do.

While Clarke clearly loves the sport, she does not sugarcoat some of NASCAR's historic flaws such as the reluctance to quickly address safety issues. In the end, this fast-paced account will leave you with some great insight and knowledge that will serve you as well in Hueytown, Alabama as it will on Madison Avenue.