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“Keep them tires warm!”

Someone’s yelling at me from the next car over.

“He totally saw you scuffing your tires,” Brent says from the passenger seat. He rolls down his window and has a quick conversation with the bald gentleman in the SUV to our right. For half an hour, we’ve been sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on a four-lane highway, and I’d tried to break up the boredom by rapidly steering back and forth as we inched forward. Apparently, the people packed into the vehicle next to us got a kick out of that.

“How far is it to the track?” Brent shouts over idling engines.

“Cain’t be more’n a mile, but y’all better settle in, ‘cause we’re in for a wait,” the stranger tells us.

“Thanks,” says Brent. He turns to me. “We should park as soon as we can and walk the rest of the way. Look! How much you think parking is there?”

He’s pointing at a woman by the side of the road holding a sign that says “Park Here”, about one hundred feet ahead of us. I pull my Toyota Matrix in to a dirt lot, pay the guy standing at the entrance five bucks, and park next to several cars with anxious-looking people stepping out. It’s eleven in the morning on race day in Martinsville, Virginia, and all I see are the aforementioned nervous-looking folks, trees, mud, asphalt, and a line of cars at a standstill. They’re ostensibly headed north to the Martinsville Speedway’s main parking lot, but the line disappears over a rise in the road, and the backup disappears over a rise to the south. Brent grabs his tiny cooler full of Miller Lite, I grab my plastic bag holding a six-pack of root beer and two bottles of water, and we start walking.

Brent and I work together in Charlotte, North Carolina. He’s definitely an urban guy, an East Coaster, a Mötley Crüe disciple, who wears polo shirts and sports a neatly trimmed haircut. He’s also the biggest NASCAR fan I know. We’d talked a few times about racing, and even though I probably know more about it than the average West Coast city kid, I’m still definitely a newbie. I’ve never looked down on stock car racing, though I grew up in San Francisco and spent a few years in New York City, just about as far from NASCAR culture as one can get. So, when Brent asked, almost offhandedly, if anyone wanted to take a road trip to Martinsville that weekend, I jumped at the opportunity to see my first race.

We’ve rented a radio scanner and headphones—Brent insists they’re essential—and we’re just reaching the edge of the race’s official grounds. It’s not too hot, not cool by any stretch, and the sky is clear and bright. Both of us are glad we’ve brought sunglasses.

“I’m not saying you have to choose a driver,” Brent says, “but if you don’t get some kind of merchandise, a cap or shirt or something, I’ll be very disappointed. Do you like any of the drivers?”

We’re walking by what looks like someone’s front lawn. It’s filled with parked cars, shirtless men in lawn chairs, at least three barbecue grills, and at least five coolers full of beer. Everyone is smiling or laughing. This scene is repeated on the other side of the road, and several times down the block.

“I’ve always liked Clint Bowyer’s name,” I say.

“That’s perfect!” says Brent.

“Bowyer’s number seven, right?” I ask.

“No no no no. He’s the Jack Daniel’s number oh-seven,” Brent corrects me. “Really cool logo.”

We’ve stopped at the top of a hill. To our right, the Martinsville Speedway’s metal grandstand looms. Directly in front of us, down the hill and spreading all the way to the track structure, is a tightly ordered bunch of trailers decorated in blinding colors and patterns as if by a psychotic three year old with a firm grasp of Photoshop. This is the official merchandise colony, and Brent is determined to find the Kurt Busch trailer to see if there’s anything he’d like, and the Clint Bowyer trailer so that I can make my first purchase. I decide I can’t commit to a t-shirt or a cap, but I can certainly commit to a Clint Bowyer wristband, if they’ve got them for sale. At the Busch trailer, Brent can’t find anything worthwhile that he doesn’t already have, and the only thing in the Bowyer trailer I even consider buying is a liquor flask, but we move on without making any purchases.

It’s fascinating how driver fandom is so closely tied to brand loyalty, I think as we walk among the trailers. Try telling baseball, football, or basketball fans that a primary sponsor will take on responsibility for all of their team’s name and imaging, and you’d get either laughs at the absurdity of the idea, or a riot upon realization that you’re serious. We won’t see the Universal Pictures Lakers, Dunkin’ Donuts Red Sox, or Starbucks Seahawks anytime soon. However, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., is as tied to Budweiser red as he is to the number 8, and when he changes his number to 88 and sponsor to Pepsi products next season, the change will be as jarring as if the Chicago Cubs decided their primary colors should be yellow and green. His fans are already in a corresponding transitional mode. Most of the Junior fans I’m seeing are still plastered with Budweiser logos and covered in red, but there are a noticeable few who have already purchased Mountain Dew apparel with his visage. Where else can someone go out in public wearing a safety-orange Home Depot t-shirt and cap, and no one even blinks? At a NASCAR track, it’s safe to assume this person is a Tony Stewart fan.

We find our seats in section F, row fourteen. We’ve got a clear view of the start-finish line a little to our right, an unimpeded view of about twenty pit boxes, and we’re high enough in the stands to see over the intra-track hubbub to the back stretch. Martinsville’s track is often described as a giant paperclip, with pits running parallel to the front stretch on an inner track all the way from the top curve to the bottom curve of the clip. It’s the smallest course on NASCAR’s schedule, so small that there is no infield because that’s where the garage area is.

“I’m getting us some hot dogs. Watch our stuff ‘til I get back,” Brent says, and then he runs up the stairs and disappears into a tunnel. When he returns, he’s holding two of Martinsville Speedway’s famous red hot dogs. These things aren’t all that big, and Brent tells me he saw a batch getting boiled. He hands me one, and I can’t understand what I’m looking at.

“I just got them with everything,” Brent says, “which means it’s a hot dog with slaw and chili.”

I take a bite, and I’m taken aback by how sweet the dog is. I look at it again, and, indeed, both the skin and meat of the dog are both bright red. It’s a good sweet, and I’m finished with it quickly. Brent hands me a beer and starts fiddling with the scanner.

As he sets us up to listen to the race’s radio broadcast, I’m watching the driver introductions. Because each fan has his or her personal favorite driver, I find the exercise a bit unnerving, as the crowd’s biases are laid so bare. In team sports, cheers and boos are all well and good, because they’re usually tied to the organization; Jerry Seinfeld nailed the concept with the crack that we’re rooting for laundry. In an individual sport like NASCAR, though, the cheers and boos take on a different tone, and they represent far more than the coincidence of being born and raised within a team’s claimed territory. The wild cheers for Dale, Jr., are cheering as much for his father as him, but they’re also cheering that he represents a young, casual, Southern cool. It’s no accident that Budweiser, a populist brand of a populist product, has been his primary sponsor, nor is it an accident that he’ll probably be wearing his cap backwards on posters advertising a product that made its bones on being “the choice of a new generation” and currently echoes the paragon of corporate cool, Nike, with its slogan “Do the Dew”.

Brent hears the introductions get down to number five and says I’ll want to pay close attention to Jeff Gordon’s. He’s won the pole for this race, so he’s introduced last. Even before the man leading the Chase for the Cup steps into the sunlight to face the crowd, choruses of boos and applause are building simultaneously. When he finally comes into the open, I can’t help laughing, as the vitriol for this guy makes little sense to me. It’s obvious from my vantage point that Gordon is a victim of being an outsider. He’s ridiculously good at the game, but he doesn’t speak like most of the fans, having grown up in California and Indiana, nor does he look like most of them with his carefully coiffed hair, nor does he give much indication that his lifestyle has anything in common with the southerners who make up much of the live NASCAR audience.

Jared Fogle, otherwise known as the dude from the Subway commercials, belts out a surprisingly robust, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” I feel the first blast of sound, and then pull my rented headphones over my ears. Someone on the radio broadcast is yelling about brake pads.

I’d been told the smells, sounds, and speed have to be experienced in person to fully appreciate, and I think I finally understand as the cars accelerate past me for the green flag. My nostrils flare. I suck in the CO2. Brent’s chuckling. Gordon’s jumped a car length ahead less than a lap in. I’m keeping an eye on Kevin Harvick. Looks like he’ll get position and pass into second.