Will The Circle Be Unbroken? An Analysis of the Daytona 500

By Sam Taylor

March 1, 2015

RACING. FAST. CAR BOYS. FAST. RACING. AMEN. The 2015 Cup Series rumbled to life this past weekend with the Daytona 500, as NASCAR fans around the country gathered and prepared themselves for food, festivals, and the customary annual automobile race into heaven. This year’s Daytona 500 marked the 56th congregation of the Cup Chase season opener, as well as the most recent attempt of humankind’s eternal struggle to breach the divine barrier separating God and his creation.

NASCAR Chairman Brian France situated the importance of the reverent fast-ness: “The Dayton 500 is the truest test of human limitations. For 200 laps, these drivers are pushed to the brink of their physical, mental, and emotional endurance. Decades of research, mechanical engineering, and personal training all culminate in a few glorious moments of bio-mechanical synthesis. Man and Machine competing as one. Then there is also the fact that these men are driving for the right to be the first among us to ascend to the right hand of the Father.”

France was not alone in yielding to the spirituality of the event. “I would really like for someone to win. That way they can tell us what God and The Devil look like,” shouted a NASCAR fan directly into my ear, jumping erratically in a clear attempt to get closer to Jehovah.

Screamed Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the Lord, “Please pick me. I want to be the guy you pick.”

With the return of championship racing, the drivers find themselves once again thrust into the religious habitus of ritual practice, subsuming their consciousness into the collective essence of their holy charge through the coordinated precision of close-quarters fast-driving. “Everything we do has a specific purpose. Even the fact that we go around 200 times,” explained Orthodox NASCARian Jimmy Stewart. “It’s so we can build up enough speed that when we hit the ramp at the end, God does not have to work so hard to suck us up into the great beyond.”

This year’s iteration of the ceremony certainly did not disappoint. The 43 lightning-hearses and their undertakers did just as the Scriptures commanded. “We all went really fast. Just about as fast as we could go. And then, in the middle of it, we all read our last will and testaments in the prose style of the U.S. Constitution, but in the cadence of Hank Williams Jr.’s ‘Are You Ready For Some Football,’ Level 31 NASCAR-Elect member Jeff Gordon reminisced.

However, yet again, not a single driver managed to make the sacred transition to eternal life. “I was really, really close, I swear,” swore young acolyte-level Driver—and this year’s first-place loser—Joey Logano. “I think I fucked up the chanting. I definitely fucked up the chanting. I’m so sorry, Holy Father.”

Critics point to a “lack of God” as explanation for the drivers’ incessant failures. But NASCAR maintains that our Almighty Creator selects only the fastest among us for life after Daytona, and we must simply increase the speed of our racing machines until he is satisfied with their horsepower.