Bill France; Guardian obit
Hyfler/Rosner
Entrepreneur who transformed the US stock car racing circuit
Michael Carlson
Monday June 11, 2007
Guardian
Although formula one motor racing is the favourite of much
of the world, as with many things Americans have their own
favourites. Bill France, who has died aged 74, oversaw the
transformation of the Nascar circuit from a regional
attraction to a national phenomenon, surpassing drag racing
and even the Indianapolis 500.
Nascar gives Americans more speed, more crashes, more direct
confrontation. Where formula one cars bear little
resemblance to the vehicles the fans drive, and circuits are
designed to encourage gear changes and make passing
difficult, Nascar's modified production cars hurtle around a
banked oval track at far higher speeds, with more
opportunity for changes of lead, and of course, far more
likelihood of crashes.
In 2001, France engineered a $2.4bn television contract with
multiple networks that ranks second only to that of the
National Football League. The winner's cup carries a
10-year, $750m sponsorship, and Nascar's annual merchandise
turnover is nearly $2bn. Even political discourse recognises
"Nascar voters", the counterpoint to "soccer moms". But the
most telling indication of the sport's mainstream acceptance
may have been the success of the movies Cars and Talladega
Nights (both 2006), in which Sacha Baron Cohen played
America's idea of the prototypical European formula one
driver: a sadistic gay man closer to Bond's Blofeld than
Jackie Stewart.
France grew up, literally, in the stock car racing business.
He was born in Washington DC, but the following year his
father, known as Big Bill, moved the family south looking
for work as an auto mechanic. They settled in Daytona,
Florida, where his father raced cars on the beach and
started promoting races. In 1947, Big Bill founded Nascar,
an acronym for the slightly redundant National Association
of Stock Car Auto Racing. Known as "junior", even though he
and his father had different middle names, young Bill took
on every job the circuit offered, from flag man to ticket
taker. He even drove, briefly, until flipping a Rambler
during a race. When his father purchased a tract of
swampland, Bill worked the road grader while building the
Daytona International Speedway, which opened in 1959.
Nascar's image was captured in Tom Wolfe's 1965 Esquire
article, the Last American Hero, which became a movie with
Jeff Bridges, about champion driver Junior Johnson, who
learned his trade running moonshine liquor, chased by
"revenuers". Its popularity was confined to the states of
the former Confederacy, its stars and fans alike were
"rednecks", and proud of it.
Changes began soon after Bill took over from his father as
Nascar chairman in 1972, with his brother Jim as a
vice-president. He combined hard-nosed practicality, born of
his experience at every level of the operation, with a
vision for growth that few others shared. Television was a
priority. Although Nascar appeared, alongside Acapulco
cliff-diving, and wrist-wrestling, on programmes like ABC's
Wide World of Sports, in 1979 France negotiated a deal with
CBS for live coverage of the whole of their showcase event,
the Daytona 500. CBS got a thriller, with Richard Petty
winning after Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison crashed on
the last lap, and viewers got to see Allison and his brother
Bobby, also a driver, fighting Yarborough on the track
afterwards.
Daytona became an annual TV event, and the jump to wider
acceptance received another huge boost when France
negotiated to create the Brickyard 400, staged on the
hallowed track of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway,
signalling a break from the confines of the southern market.
After the 2001 television deal, France accelerated the move
away from small southern towns such as Darlington or
Rockingham in the Carolinas, to tracks in bigger markets
around the country. Its drivers now hail from places such as
New Hampshire and are national celebrities.
France's style was often described as a "benevolent
dictatorship", and it was passed on to a third generation
when he stepped down as chairman in 2003, having already
relinquished the presidency after suffering a mild heart
attack in 1997.
His son Brian replaced him as chairman, though Bill famously
interrupted him from the audience at an early press
conference when he thought his son was not explaining their
westward expansion clearly enough, and his daughter, Lesa
Kennedy, is president of International Speedway Corporation,
which owns 12 of the 18 Nascar tracks.
France was diagnosed with cancer in 1999, and though it was
in remission he was severely weakened by treatment, and by
triple bypass surgery in 2002.
His last public appearance came when he was honoured in
February before this year's Daytona 500. Nascar staged a
Bill France hot dog dinner.
He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Betty, and his son
and daughter.
· William Clifton France, stock car entrepreneur, born April
4 1933; died June 4 2007