Is NASCAR actually good or is there a carbon monoxide leak in my house?

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When you’re sitting on dirt at a race track, your sweaty hand holding an equally sweaty dagwood dog, it can be easy to forget that car racing started as a gentleman’s sport.

In the early days of racing, cars were expensive and there weren’t any monetary incentives to drive. Sure you could win some races, but you’d get no Rolex sponsorships, lucrative contracts, or television coverage. This put the sport firmly in the hands of the rich.

Without the possibility of fame and fortune, it’s hard to say what made these men race in those rickety death traps. Perhaps it was similar to the compulsion that drove George Mallory up Everest (“because it is there” he said to one reporter when asked why he was attempting the climb. He died. Everest is still there and now so is his body). Perhaps it’s all part of the human desire to be the first, to win, to prove something.

Of course, car racing is still largely a rich person’s sport. The Formula One grid is rotten with the sons of billionaires, Russian oligarchs, and racing dynasties. Lance Stroll, for example, is a tremendously average driver. You would think this would preclude him from a career behind the wheel of a Formula One car. But luckily for Lance, he does have the competitive advantage of a fashion-tycoon dad who bought a racing team for him.

To some degree, Formula One still leans on this visage of wealth and celebrity. If not for the glamour, this is just a sport where a bunch of lunatics drive very quickly in front of a crowd who are hoping to see a crash (but pretending that is not the case).

But imagine if we didn’t pretend. Imagine if we took car racing for exactly what it is.

Enter NASCAR.

Even for a motoring fan like myself, NASCAR seemed too big, too stupid, and too overtly designed for crashes. And then I watched the Netflix series NASCAR: TOP SPEED and realised it was definitely all those things. And they were great.

This show has a similar format to Drive to Survive, the series which brought Formula One into the mainstream. You follow the drivers and teams as they go through a season.

Like so many things out of America at the moment, NASCAR is beyond parody. One of their drivers is called Bubba Wallace, for Christ’s sake. His crew chief is Bootie Barker. These are not cartoon characters. These are humans who have parents who decided to give them those names.

If there’s one thing Bubba and his fellow drivers want to do it’s win, and boy howdy do we hear about it in the driver interviews. You wouldn’t necessarily expect these men to have any real introspection or insight about what drives them to pursue this goal with such single-minded determination. And, of course, they don’t. They are cliché vending machines and the film crew have an endless supply of small change.

But, considering some of the crashes these men have been in, it’s a miracle their brains haven’t been completely centrifuged out of their ears and they’re able to respond at all.

But this isn’t to say the dialogue doesn’t have its moments. After being forced off the track in a critical race, one forlorn driver addressed the camera. “It’s my fault,” he says. “If you’re running in the back with the squirrels you’re going to get your nuts busted”. Until I heard this line, I was not aware that squirrels were known for running in the back of packs. It pays to be intellectually humble.

NASCAR isn’t always about getting your balls busted by squirrels, though. Sometimes you are at the font, winning races. You then get to taste the sweet nectar of victory. In Formula One, that comes in the form of champagne shaken up and sprayed on the podium. In NASCAR it’s several cans of Monster energy drink — that sugary caffeinated battery acid — poured over your head by your teammates.

In one scene, a euphoric driver blinks through rivets of Monster streaming down his face after a race win. ‘My God,’ I thought. ‘They’ll blind him’.

Ross Chastain, another crowd favourite, celebrates his victories by smashing a watermelon onto the tarmac. This is, of course, because he’s a proud eighth-generation watermelon farmer. Don’t ask me to explain the symbolism, I do not understand it.

I did wonder about the logistics of this particular stunt. Does Ross bring a watermelon to every race in hopes that he might have cause to smash it? What happens when he doesn’t win? Does he drive home with the melon rolling around forlornly in the backseat of his car?

I suppose sometimes you get to smash your victory watermelon, sometimes you don’t. It’s how you pick yourself up in the middle which counts.

I do not know what makes people drive race cars, but I know why I watch them. There is something compelling about the pursuit of excellence, particularly when it involves an element of danger. Even as distant spectators, we are elevated by the scaling of Everest or a daring victory in a race, perhaps because we catch a glimpse of our own potential in that reflected glory.

NASCAR: FULL SPEED takes this noble facet of humanity, wraps it in American flags, drops it in batter, hands it an AK40, and then sets off some fireworks in the background.

It’s grotesque. I love it.

Five stars.