The smell of exhaust, the thunderous roar of engines, the crashing plang of crashes. The air of the Daytona 500 still lingers, and though as of press time I can’t declare the winner yet, aren’t all we NASCAR fans the real winners?

The think-tank “steering” NASCAR, so to speak, has been increasing efforts to publicize the variety of NASCAR fans there are out there, and to broaden the appeal to those who believe it a sport for the trailer park set. But those like yours truly have known for years that NASCAR speaks volumes about the human condition. Man and machine in a life-or-death struggle against other men and machines; it is the essence of what it means to be a sentient being in the twenty-first century.

It is time NASCAR “outed” those cowardly intellectuals who still publicly deny their affection for the sport of stock car racing. Not to cast unkind dispersions on those doubtful souls, it is difficult to acknowledge just how much we love the thrill of car racing when it is so sadly stigmatized in our culture. The tragic assumption is that NASCAR appeals only to the undereducated working classes, the passive drones lacking upward mobility, the drunken and shirtless, but we can finally reveal the brilliance of NASCAR and our enthusiasm for it now that we’ve found safety in numbers.

I remember as a youngster, sitting in front of the fire and listening to the melodious voice of announcer Rudy Skaggs as he provided commentary on the Daytona 500 over the a.m. radio. My parents listened along as well, smiling joyfully, as mother carved her decorative wax candles and father worked on his novel. Though I mostly cheered for Dale Earnhardt (before he was Dale Earnhardt Sr.), I admit it was a joy simply to hear anyone win.

The ecstasy never diminished. I went away to college at Cornell and labored intensely toward my philosophy degree, but the weekends were spent with my NASCAR enthusiasts group, other students of philosophy, the humanities, the sciences, business, or refrigeration repair, watching the bouts on the television and discussing the nature of modern man and his relations to technology, vis-à-vis the loss of humanity and the mistakes of unwelcome pit stops later in the race, all between commercials, of course.

Would that I were one of those pilots of the gods! That could accelerate my own chariot adorned with logos by Quaker State and Tide, edging ahead of the greatest athletes of all time, such as Richard Petty and A.J. Foyt. If only the nerves of steel were mine, the lightning reactions needed I owned, and I had a driver’s license. But lacking these, I am fortunate like the rest of us to be a spectator at this, the greatest test of human and engine endurance the world has ever seen.

The Daytona 500 of 2004, as tradition dictates, has drawn the most notable celebrities. Ben Affleck, LeAnn Rimes, and the president George W. Bush. Only the noble game of stockcar racing could attract such individuals of diverse backgrounds and professions—the men and women at the top of their respective fields. Of course, in the presence of such newspaper-worthy names, other intellectuals are unfortunately disregarded, but I understand many others turned out for the event. Placido Domingo, Susan Sontag, Joyce Carol Oates, George Will, Noam Chomsky, Ben Kingsley, John Updike, Ralph Nader, all are fans of the sport of kings. Unsurprisingly, I might add; for aren’t we all?