I love Nascar.

I love it even more now that my favorite driver won Sunday after a drought of 76 races! But that is another post.

I know what all the naysayers say about Nascar - it's not really a sport, anyone can drive round and round, only beer-swilling rednecks watch it, blah, blah, blah.

Blah.

It's so frustrating to me when people dismiss something or mock it, simply because they are ignorant about it. I don't care if you don't like it, can't get into it, have no interest in it - but don't put me down because I enjoy it. I don't enjoy baseball (or basketball or hockey, for that matter) but I don't put someone down for liking it. Different people like different things, and that is ok. It's how God made us!

And here's a question to reflect on, next time the subject of Nascar comes up. Can you drive a car at about 200 miles an hour, on a 33 degree angle (called a bank), in a firesuit, when the temperature outside is over 90 and the track temperature is over 125 degrees with 40 other drivers trying to cut you off and push you out of the way, for more than 4 hours straight?

Didn't think so!

I was joking with friends the other night that Nascar is in my blood, but it's not really a joke. My grandmother and her boyfriend used to go to races all over the place. I imagine her interest might have been partly due to his but it was interest just the same. My dad always watched, too (though football took first place if a choice had to be made.)

A few years ago, I attended my first race and my love of the sport grew, as did my respect for the drivers and their teams. It is amazing how knowledgeable they need to be, are required to be, to keep the driver safe and on the track. The sport has made great strides in the past few years to make the drivers safer - changing the car, installing safer barrier walls, increasing safety equipment in the cars and so on. Serious accidents can still happen but safeguards are in place to make them happen less and less. (If you want to see what I mean, check this out...it's absolutely insane.)

So what is my point? I guess simply that you don't have to enjoy a sport to respect it, its participants and most of all, its fans.

Stay tuned for O...