Sprint Car Racing
Sprint cars are high-powered race cars designed primarily for the purpose of running on short oval or circular dirt or paved tracks. Sprint car racing is popular in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Sprint cars have a high power-to-weight ratio, making speeds in excess of 140 miles per hour (230 km/h) possible on some tracks. 630 horsepower (470 kW) is commonplace for these machines. The safety record of sprint car racing in recent years has been greatly improved by the use of roll cages to protect the drivers. Many IndyCar Series and NASCAR drivers used sprint car racing as an intermediate stepping stone on their way to more high profile divisions, including Indianapolis 500 winners A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Johnny Rutherford, Parnelli Jones, Johnnie Parsons, and Al Unser Jr., as well as NASCAR Sprint Cup champions Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart.
The National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum located in Knoxville, Iowa, USA features exhibits to highlight the history of both winged and non-wing sprint cars.
Read more about Sprint Car Racing: Non-winged Sprint Cars, Winged Sprint Cars, Sanctioning Bodies, Television Coverage in The United States, Safety Aspects
Famous quotes containing the words car and/or racing:
“Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)