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Stock car racing is a form of automobile racing found mainly in the United States, Canada and Great Britain held largely on oval rings of between approximately a quarter-mile and 2.66 miles (about 0.4 to 4.2 kilometres) in length, but also raced occasionally on road courses. more...

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Ovals shorter than one mile (1.6 km) are called short tracks; unpaved short tracks are called dirt tracks; longer ovals are typically known as superspeedways. Top level races are generally 200 to 600 miles (300-1000 km) in total length. Average top speeds in the top classes are around 160 mph (275.5 km/h), compared to 220 mph (354 km/h) in comparable levels of open wheel racing. Some NASCAR races can reach speeds of 204-208 mph (328-334 km/h) at tracks such as Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Lowe's Motor Speedway. NASCAR has implemented the use of restrictor plates at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway for safety reasons thereby limiting top speeds to approximately 187 mph (301 km/h) when not drafting.

Stock Cars

A stock car, in the original sense of the term, is an automobile that has not been modified from its original factory configuration. Later the term stock car came to mean any production-based automobile used in racing. This term was used to differentiate such a car from a race car, a special, custom-built car designed only for racing purposes with no intent of its ever being used as regular transportation.

When NASCAR was first formed by Bill France Sr. in 1948 to regulate stock car racing, there was a requirement that any car entered be made entirely of parts available to the general public through automobile dealers, and that all cars must be from a model run of which at least 500 cars of that model were sold to the general public. This is referred to as "homologation". In NASCAR's early years, the cars were so "stock" that it was commonplace for the drivers to drive themselves to the competitions in the car that they were going to run in the race. While automobile engine technology had remained fairly stagnant in World War II, advanced aircraft piston engine development had provided a great deal of available data, and NASCAR was formed just as some the improved technology was about to become available in production cars. Until the advent of the Trans-Am series in 1967, NASCAR homologation cars were the closest thing that the public could buy that was actually very similar to the cars that were winning the national races.

The early years

Before NASCAR was founded in 1948, moonshine runners during the prohibition era would often have to outrun the authorities. To do so, they had to upgrade their vehicles and eventually started getting together with fellow runners and making runs together. They would challenge one another and eventually progressed to organized events in the early 1930's. The main problem racing faced was the lack of a unified set of rules among the different tracks. The racers could not race at different tracks because it was not legal for them to race there. When Bill France saw this problem he set up a meeting at the Streamline Hotel in order to form an organization that would unify the rules. From this meeting NASCAR was founded in 1948.

Read more at Wikipedia.org