Getting the guys together for a Man Day is essential to your health. But instead of getting seats for a basketball game, football tailgate, or trip to the ballpark, switch it up and check out at NASCAR race.
It’s easy to forget just how athletic the sport of NASCAR can be. These drivers are going anywhere from 90 to 200 miles per hour, sometimes for stretches of more than three straight hours (they don’t take a half time or innings change). I’ve heard stories of racers having to relieve themselves in their cars because hey, it’s a competition and every fraction of a second counts. #gnarly
Professional NASCAR Driver for the #20 Tide car, Matt Kenseth, told The Manual, “It’s such a mental battle… and can get real hot. The better shape you’re in, the less you focus on the heat, and more on the race power and how you’re going to pass the guy in front of you.”
It’s also easy to forget, or misinterpret, how exciting NASCAR races are.
The recent Brickyard 400 race at the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway, for instance, was a high-thrills, holy-shit-moment, dangerous race that saw the clear winners crash, a downpour of rain, and an underdog win by Kasey Kahne who hadn’t won a race since Atlanta in 2014. And instead of lasting three hours, it stretched from 2:45 PM until 9 PM (that’s over six hours for those counting on their fingers).
And that was just race day. The days leading up to that Sunday, Brickyard 400 also held a mini-music festival with The Chainsmokers, Major Lazer, Mac Miller, Pretty Lights, DNCE and Cheat Codes, plus attendee competitions, and tours of the legendary Indie bricks.
A third reason to take the dudes to NASCAR (you won’t get this in any other sport) … duh, the cars.
We heard one Brickyard 400 viewer say, “I didn’t always know the racers growing up, but I knew the cars. They become the players.”
Not only do these cars take us back to the spring of our youth, playing with miniature versions and launching them off the kitchen table, but they put us in awe from their engineering power and, well, speed.
A great example of this is the #20 Tide Car (a racing iconoclast) driven by Kenseth at Joe Gibbs Racing.
*If that last name sounds familiar, let us give you a hint. Joe Gibbs was a Hall of Fame NFL head coach, winning three Super Bowl titles with the Washington Redskins before retiring and focusing on family and racing. Gibbs was at Brickyard 400 cheering on his team, hoping for a third-straight win from another one of his drivers, Kyle Busch.
Tide has been in NASCAR for an epic 20 years, but left the playing field in 2006. It wasn’t until the cleaning and detergent company debuted its new Tide PODs, that they wanted back in. Their return to NASCAR in 2016 can only be compared to Dave Chappell coming out of retirement. It. Was. Huge.
“I get the biggest kick when people come to market with you and race with you,” Gibbs told The Manual about his racing partnership with Tide PODs. “We get to all sit together in the winners circle. I think of Tide as the quarterback. In football, you’re not going anywhere if you don’t have a great QB.”
So swap out your Dak or LeBron jersey for an orange #20 Tide hat, brush up on your Ricky Bobby quotes, and haul ass to the racetracks with the boys. (There’s beer and hot dogs there too, so have no fear.)
