Ladies, buckle your seat belts for Nascar 101

In “The Girl's Guide to Nascar,” media correspondent Liz Allison, wife of the late NASCAR driver Davey Allison, tackles the ins and outs of NASCAR — explaining the official point and flag systems, regulations on cars, and how drivers make it to the starting (and finish) line. She also offers helpful tips to female fans on traveling to and from race events and surviving an entire race weekend with kids, and shares recipes for throwing a great NASCAR viewing party. Here's an excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE
The Starting Lineup
The popularity and growth of the sport speaks for itself. But make no mistake, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) has carefully charted and directed the course of the enormously successful stock car racing series from the very beginning. The NASCAR you see today seems to be very different from the NASCAR that started over fifty years ago, but it is not as different as one might think. What has remained “on track” through the years are the colorful personalities of the drivers, the fierce competition, and the steadfast fans.

Before NASCAR
Was there wheeled racing before NASCAR? You betcha ... but not what we know as racing in this day and age. Racing can be traced back as far as the horse-and-buggy days when young men (and women) with a need for speed rumbled across rock-filled dirt roads. Later generations raced cars on back roads and makeshift drag strips before the first racetrack was ever built. The first racetracks were simply dirt, making for great racing and dirt-filled noses and ears. The beauty of the racing of years past was the concept of “from the road to the track.” Basically, if you had four wheels, you could race. It was not uncommon to have your dentist and milkman racing each other on Saturday night at the local racetrack. It would be years before the word “professional” would come before “race car driver.” Until then, racing was a fun hobby for thrill seekers; certainly nothing like the big business it is today.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, completed in 1909, was technically the first non-dirt track to be built in the United States, even though it did not run stock cars at first. The track surface was built out of bricks instead of asphalt ... 3.2 million bricks, to be exact, hence the nickname the Brickyard.

NBC VIDEO Ladies, start your engines for NASCAR 101 May 17:  The "Today" show's Ann Curry talks with Liz Allison talks about her book "The Girl's Guide to NASCAR." Today show

Professional auto racing began with a jumbled array of small sanctioning bodies for stock car racing across the Southeast that organized races from the mid-1930s until the late 1940s. There was no governing body or anyone to basically police the events, setting the stage for several different problems for the drivers ... like being paid, for example. Before NASCAR, a race promoter might set up a race, raise the funds for the race purse, sell tickets, bring in the drivers, and then head out of town before the race was over — with the winnings, ticket monies, and all. Many racers were left with nothing but expenses and no paycheck to help pay the bills.

Undoubtedly, NASCAR racing would be in a different place if not for the vision of a banker turned race car driver from Washington, D.C., by the name of Bill France. Seeking his dreams, France had set out on a cross-country trip from Washington to Miami when a little car trouble sidetracked him for a few days in Daytona Beach, Florida. That unplanned stopover changed the course of his life and the course of racing.

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