Jack Boulware

A look at the Mecca of NASCAR fans—Mooresville, North Carolina, aka “Race City USA.” They were thrilled to be interviewed for Playboy.

Won’t You Take Me to NASCAR Town

Country music fans make their pilgrimage to Nashville and the Grand Old Opry. Elvis geeks have Memphis and Graceland. But where’s the Mecca for stock-car racing? Where can a NASCAR fan go to kneel on the floor of a garage, touch the fender of Dale Earnhardt Junior’s #8 Budweiser Chevrolet, and whisper, “I can’t believe I’m in the cathedral of God”? That would be Mooresville, North Carolina, aka “Race City USA.”

A short drive north from Charlotte, Mooresville has just 19,000 population, but is home to 50 stock car racing teams. Given that NASCAR is America’s fastest growing sport, money is everywhere. The banks of nearby Lake Norman are lined with fast boats and million-dollar mansions. Along streets like “Performance Road” and “Speedway Drive,” restaurants beckon hungry gearheads with stock cars mounted on the roofs, and racing colors splashed across the walls. There’s a racing hall of fame, antique car museum, racing simulators, and a NASCAR amusement park. Eager visitors tromp through teams’ showrooms and gift shops, escorted by NASCAR’s unofficial cruise ship director, Trisha Fuller.

A former waitress, Trisha started offering tours of the NASCAR team locations in 2001, and her Race Shop Tours company now shuttles fans each day around Mooresville and surrounding communities. Tour couples will celebrate their honeymoon in Race City USA, she says, and some even staging their weddings in front of their favorite racing shop.

“People were asking in restaurants and hotels: ‘Where’s the race car shops?’ There was just a need,” explains Trisha. “People really want to see the race cars being built. Especially the men. A lot of them have just one day to find all these shops. They want to find as many as they can. So we do 23 teams in one seven-hour tour.”

Eager NASCAR addicts are whisked up and down the small roads in Trisha’s 15-passenger van, as she enthusiastically delivers a steady stream of facts and trivia. Teams have 20 cars. If it’s Wednesday, don’t bother the crew because the truck is getting packed. The best days to watch pit crews practice are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Chassis shops are where fabricators cut the sheets of metal and shape them into the car bodies. And if a tour happens to bump into a driver, the fans go bonkers with excitement.

“We run into celebrities,” Trisha says. “Michael Waltrip, Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon. I see these drivers all the time. I see Jimmy Spencer at Home Depot getting cabinets. But when the fans see them, I still get goose bumps.”

NASCAR is huge business, second only to the NFL in televised sports. So why is a billion-dollar racing empire all bunched up in a little town in North Carolina? Mooresville was just another sleepy mill town struggling with economic hardship, until the Penske Racing Team relocated to the quiet community in 1990, attracted by low taxes and convenient access to three interstate freeways. More teams followed, and today Mooresville’s motorsports industry annually contributes $750 million in business, employing half the town’s workforce. A half an hour away, the town of Concord boasts Lowe’s Motor Speedway, with two more racetracks within a short drive. Two of NASCAR’s biggest races are held in the area over two weeks of Memorial Day.

Trisha’s most popular tour stops include the palatial “Garage Mahal” headquarters of Dale Earnhardt Inc., with museum and gift shop; the Sam Bass Gallery, home base for the artist and his illustrated portraits of NASCAR drivers and cars; and Lancaster’s BBQ, with 10,000 square feet of NASCAR memorabilia. If fans hop off the tour, they can visit Lowe’s Speedway and take a high-speed “drive along” ride in the passenger seat of a stock car from the Richard Petty Driving School.

So why do shop teams allow tourists to gawk while they work, especially if they’re busting their ass on deadline to rebuild a crashed car? “I can tell by the look on a driver or a crew chief’s face if they want to be left alone,” says Trisha. “Racers are like country people. When people come to visit they really love it. Over-stepping the boundary is the only thing.”

With so many competing teams working in such close proximity, it seems that espionage comes with the territory. Teams do lose employees to other shops, mostly for a bigger paycheck. But ultimately NASCAR is one big family, and gossip travels fast. “If you start bad mouthing a driver or a team, in front of a receptionist listening behind the desk, her husband’s dad’s uncle’s brother probably works for another team,” says Trisha.

Because of its Bible Belt location, Race City USA obviously caters to the squeaky clean crowd. But not every NASCAR fan is married with four kids, and neither are the drivers. Some are definitely single, like Jeff Gordon, recently divorced after a much-publicized affair with the lovely Deanna Merryman (see our October 2003 issue). Visitors wanting to escape the family-friendly Disneyworld atmosphere head to Charlotte, where an NFL franchise and several colleges guarantee plenty of bars and strip clubs.

Trisha Fuller offers tours Monday through Friday, for $55 per person (www.raceshoptours.net; 704-788-8802).

(A version of this appeared in Playboy magazine)