We’re closing in on the ultimate handful of weeks of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Collection season, the inventory automobile collection’ seventy fifth anniversary marketing campaign. To have fun, every week by way of the tip of the season, Ryan McGee is presenting his prime 5 favourite issues in regards to the sport.
Prime 5 best-looking automobiles? Test. Prime 5 hardest drivers? We have it. Prime 5 mustaches? There could be just one, so possibly not.
With out additional ado, our 75 favourite issues about NASCAR, celebrating 75 years of inventory automobile racing.
Earlier installments: Hardest drivers | Biggest races | Greatest title fights | Greatest-looking automobiles | Worst-looking automobiles
5 greatest cheaters
We’re not fairly to the midway level of our collection of NASCAR 75 top-five best lists, however we will see the crossed flags off within the distance … or wait … is {that a} black flag telling us to drag into the pits and serve a penalty? As a result of after taking a look at drivers, races and automobiles, it is time to flip the microscope on those that labored tirelessly to enter these drivers and automobiles into races by sneaking issues previous NASCAR tech inspectors. The crew chiefs and engineers who lived their racing lives within the grey space of the rulebook.
Yeah, I will say it. Cheaters. However once I say “cheaters,” perceive what the paddock already does, that you may’t apply a stick-and-ball definition of “cheater” (see: Patriots, Astros, and so forth.) to a racer.
The best NASCAR groups and mechanics put on that title as a badge of honor. Positive, getting caught may result in fines and penalties and embarrassment, however these are all non permanent. The storage glory comes within the winks and nods and pats on the again from rivals as they are saying, “Dude, solution to push the bounds. I want I had considered that!”
So, seize a bottle of tire softener and a can of nitrous disguised as a hearth extinguisher and skim forward as we current our top-five best cheaters in NASCAR historical past.
Honorable point out: Glenn Dunnaway
Poor Dunnaway went from historic hero to timeless goat within the matter of 1 postrace inspection — the very first postrace inspection in NASCAR Cup Collection historical past.
It was June 19, 1949, and the 1-year-old sanctioning physique was holding the primary Strictly Inventory occasion, the collection that turned what we now know as Cup, on a three-quarter-mile filth monitor positioned simply throughout the highway from the present location of the large worldwide airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. Dunnaway, of close by Gastonia, received the occasion by a full three laps, however inspectors dominated that his 1947 Ford was operating illegally spaced rear springs, also called “moonshiner springs,” that violated the principles of being a straight-off-the-street inventory automobile.
Dunnaway and automobile proprietor Hubert Westmoreland — who had certainly made a moonshine run in that very automobile the evening earlier than — have been stripped of the victory, and it was given to Jim Roper, whose title stays etched within the NASCAR historical past books as its first Cup Collection winner. For your entire story, together with the lawsuit that adopted, learn