It’s Clear to See Why So Many Go Along for Ride

You couldn’t walk through the garages of the California Speedway on Sunday without bumping into various Wayans brothers, proving one of two things: the Wayans really do outnumber the rest of our population, or NASCAR has passed the critical crossover point.

The smart money’s on NASCAR. Actually, the smart money’s in NASCAR. That’s why everyone seems to want a part of the $3-billion annual business that Fortune magazine calls “the best return on investment in professional sports.”

Former NFL quarterbacks Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman are joining and recently retired receiver Tim Brown wants in. And so do the Wayans brothers.

The question I’ve wondered throughout the start of the summer is, why?

Why do people like to watch the same cars go around the same track over and over again?

Why would 100,000 Southern Californians arrive on time (imagine that) to sit for hours on a hot afternoon?

Why get emotionally invested in athletes (and yes, they’re athletes) when even the very best can be undone by a blown tire or a faulty transmission?

I got my first answer in June, at Infineon’s road course in Sonoma, where Mitch Stenson and his buddy Scott Wildman perched along the first turn. I started to ask why they liked NASCAR when I had to pause as pack of cars came roaring past the start-finish line and up the hill. According to Wildman, I had my answer.

“That’s the reason right there,” he yelled over the roar.

“The sound and the thunder,” Stenson said. “The smell of NASCAR.”

There’s also some, uh, peripheral entertainment options. Wildman pulled out a digital camera and flipped to a shot of his smiling face next to a woman’s low-cut top, taken earlier in the day.

As for the refreshments, even a California Speedway news release referred to designated-driver programs “to assist the legions of brewsky-swilling race fans.”

NASCAR is part Mardi Gras, part auto shop, part reality show, part traffic report -- and an all-out assault on the senses. It starts with blaring music and barbecuing food, well before the race even starts. Then there’s the heavy odor of the leaded fuel that lingers around the track. The noise that follows the command of “Gentlemen, start your engines!” The rush of cars whizzing past.

“The coolest thing is when you come to a race ... when you come and see it live and you’re there and you get the sound and you get the feel and then the smell,” said Kurt Busch, the defending NASCAR Nextel Cup champion. “If you’re right there, you get it all. And it’s something that you can’t get if you just sit there and turn on the TV at your house.

“That’s what makes our sport so unique. You can sit there and watch it on TV, and you get more of the perspective of the pit strategy and the way the guys are passing each other out on the track. Then when you come to the race, you lose a little bit of that, but you can still see live what’s going on, and you can get a scanner and hear the teams and what transmissions go back and forth. And you have the smell, you’ve got the sight, the feel. When cars come by at 200 miles an hour, it blows you away.”

Busch was standing in his team trailer, giving a behind-the-scenes tour. The drivers don’t mind explaining the nuances of their sport. Busch pulled out a shock absorber from the collection customized for each track and described why you’d want a stiff ride for Daytona as opposed to a bouncy ride for Bristol.

Attention soccer-heads: One of the reasons the sport isn’t more popular in the United States is because those of us who don’t like soccer are sick of those who do telling us how ignorant we are for failing to appreciate the game’s beauty. With NASCAR, the acronym might as well stand for Nothing Approaching Soccer’s Condescending Attitude to Rookies.

And that, indirectly, is what led to the Wayans brothers. Fifteen years ago sports agent Sean Holley finally acquiesced to the demands of Charlotte Hornet Scott Burrell, a client, and went to a race.

What hooked Holley was “the way the NASCAR fans embrace people that are new to a race,” he said Sunday. “It’s one big family.”

Holley, who is African American, said he never felt uncomfortable even though there were so few other black faces in the crowd. Behind him, a Confederate flag flew above an RV in the infield. A woman walked by in a “Redneck Girl” T-shirt. Yet Holley said the only funny looks he gets are when he tells his African American friends that he’s going to a NASCAR race.

“They say, ‘You’re doing what?’ ” Holley said. “Once I take them to a race, they call me every week to talk about it.”

Now Holley has established Star Motorsports, with the Wayans brothers as partners, and he plans to have its first Nextel Cup series car next year. Keenen Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans were at the race Sunday.

“To us, it’s just kind of starting to tap into our audience, and we’re excited,” Shawn Wayans said. “We need to be part of that transition, because it is pop culture.”

It’s also a role reversal from other sports, where long after the playing fields were integrated, minorities are just breaking into the ownership ranks. In NASCAR we’re more likely to see black or Latino owners before the first minority driver chases the championship.

“There’s no one available for the Cup series,” said Tim Brown, who’s hoping to form a new team in partnership with Roush racing.

NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity helps fund minority drivers and crew members on the Dodge Weekly Series and the Craftsman Truck series. If NASCAR is going to take the next step and become as large as NASCAR Chief Executive Brian France envisions, it will have to go from its core culture to cross-cultural. It needs a Danica Patrick or a Tiger Woods. That’ll get the folks in my barbershop talking about it, and open a whole new money well.

“I keep saying that if we don’t get diversity right, we won’t get there,” France said.

It’s not as if NASCAR’s hurting for cash now. Licensed merchandise sales top $2 billion a year. Sponsors love it because the cars are Tivo-proof ads rolling through the second-highest rated television sport after the NFL, and the fans are fiercely loyal to the brands and their favorite cars.

It’s a bond formed in part because of the accessibility of the drivers, who are available to the media and public until they pull out of pit row.

Sponsors and VIPs get to tour the garages, the team trailers, sit in on the pre-race meeting -- in other words, everything short of riding shotgun during the race.

“The drivers get pulled a lot of different directions, but it’s terribly important for us to keep that dynamic going,” France said.

Here’s the thing: Once you care about where your guy finishes, you’ll take a great interest in those cars going around and around the track. The guy I’ve been following ever since the race in Sonoma is Jeff Gordon, when we talked about how he’s the only NASCAR driver to get shout-outs in a Nelly song.

“That was very cool,” Gordon said. “I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that. I got to meet Nelly, I went to one of his concerts and thanked him personally. That’s the kind of music I like.”

So is that what he’d have in the CD changer if NASCAR rides had stereos?

“I would definitely listen to some Nelly, some 50 Cent,” Gordon said. “I like it when it’s boomin’. I’d have to put in some good bass, for sure. I’ve got to see that mirror vibrate.”

If he’s bumping Nelly and 50, I’m riding with Gordon. Which brings up another NASCAR innovation: the Chase for the Nextel Cup. In its second year, France’s creation turned the circuit to a season-long points tally in which the top 10 qualify for the playoff-style showdown in the final 10 races. Gordon has been on the fringe all season and stands in 12th place, 30 points out, after finishing 21st Sunday, with one more chance to get in next week.

And you know what? I’ll be watching.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande go to latimes.com/adande.