Nascar Facts

NASCAR teams use nitrogen instead of regular air to fill their tires because it maintains more consistent pressure under extreme heat.

Frankie Muniz became famous playing Malcolm on Malcolm in the Middle. When the show ended, he left Hollywood to chase a different dream. Today he races full-time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, driving the No. 33 truck for Team Reaume. He finished top 10 at Daytona in his rookie season. He just re-signed for a full-time 2026 season.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is nicknamed the Brickyard for a real reason. In 1909, workers paved the whole 2.5-mile track with 3.2 million bricks. Asphalt slowly buried nearly all of them, until only a 36-inch strip survived at the finish line. Drivers still kiss that strip after every win. In 2025, a repave dug into a turn and found the original bricks still down there.

The five who come over the wall at a NASCAR pit stop are not the shop's mechanics. Teams scout college football for players too small for the NFL. Hendrick Motorsports invited 52 to a June tryout and expected to hire one to five. Four tires and a full tank in about ten seconds. Somewhere on pit road Sunday is a linebacker who never got an NFL call, still chasing a championship.

The car on the Daytona 500 trophy never raced. It is a model of Firebird I, a concept car built around a 370-horsepower gas turbine. GM design chief Harley Earl designed the car. NASCAR founder Bill France named the trophy after his friend Earl in 1959. Since 1998, every winner has kept a 54-pound replica of the trophy. The winner still lifts the Firebird's likeness every February.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. went to North Wilkesboro Speedway in December 2019 and cleared weeds off the cracked track with a string trimmer, in the rain, with friends and track crews. NASCAR's Cup Series had last raced there in 1996, and the clean-up let a racing simulator scan the surface. The interest that followed helped bring racing back, and in July 2026 Joey Logano won the track's first Cup points race in 30 years.