Okay, so the other day I was watching NASCAR with my buddy, and he turned to me and asked, “Dude, how many laps do they actually do in these races?” Honestly, I had no clue. I mean, I knew it was a lot, but I couldn’t give him a solid number. So, naturally, I decided to find out for myself.
My Little Investigation
First, I grabbed my phone and did some quick searching. It took a few moments of me scrolling around.
I learned that most NASCAR races are around 200 laps. 200! That seemed like a huge number, especially when you think about other racing series.
Then, I found a few web pages that described it, I realized why NASCAR has so many laps. It’s because the tracks are way shorter, relatively speaking, than, say, a Formula 1 track. The length will decide how many laps they will do.
Figuring Out the “Why”
- Short Tracks: NASCAR tracks can be pretty short, like under a mile.
- Longer Tracks: Even the bigger ones, like Talladega, are still only a few miles long (I saw one that said 2.66 miles).
So, basically, they’re doing tons of laps to make the overall race distance long enough. It’s not like they’re doing 200 laps on a super long circuit. The shorter the laps, the more laps they do. I try to remember this principle.
The Final Result
I went back to my friend and explaind what I had found. He was surprised and asked if there were many kinds of tracks. After telling him, he finally believed it.
So, yeah, that’s my little story of how I figured out the whole NASCAR lap thing. It’s actually pretty simple once you look into it. Hope you enjoyed the journey of realization as much as I did!
