I’m old enough to remember when “classic” NASCAR meant Richard Petty and cars that actually looked stock. But time flows with the inevitably of a big crash at Talladega. The 2001 NASCAR season is 25 years behind us, and it’s aging remarkably well—especially when you relive it through high-quality footage.
The NASCAR Classics YouTube channel has tons of clips, and even entire races, spanning the virtual entirety of the series’ 78-year history. Recently, the folks running the channel have been doing something different. Instead of just reposting broadcast material, they’re throwing in the occasional “Sights & Sounds” video comprised of clips from trackside cameras with no commentary or narration in widescreen HD. It’s higher quality than most people would have experienced with early 2000s TVs, and the lack of voiceovers gives it a more intimate, home-movie feel.
The latest release is from the EA Sports 500, the fall Cup Series race at Talladega that year. The season got off to a tragic start when Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed in a crash in the final corner of the Daytona 500, just as Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr. secured a 1-2 finish for his own Dale Earnhardt Inc. team. Junior naturally became the focal point of the rest of the season, and you can hear plenty of cheering as he wins this race.
Earnhardt Jr. had several emotional wins that season, including the Pepsi 400 that was the first race at Daytona after his father’s death, and the first race after the September 11th terrorist attacks, held at Dover. But Jeff Gordon was ultimately crowned champion, showing just how competitive the Cup Series was that year. The star-studded field at the EA Sports 500 also included memorable names like Tony Stewart and Mark Martin. The then-42-year-old embraced stereotypes with his Viagra-sponsored Ford.
The cars also sounded great, raced well, and sported memorable liveries from sponsors who didn’t inspire grimaces once you found out what they did. It’s no wonder NASCAR was more or less at the peak of its popularity in the early 2000s. The series was more commercialized than in its romanticized early days of bootleggers and shade tree mechanics, but it had definitely found a formula that worked.
So if you need an existential palate cleanse, hit play and crank up the volume.
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