I was having one of those arguments with a sanctimonious environmentalist about SUV’s and the damage they are doing. The usual “gas guzzling” arguments were thrown up in my face, and this person had the gall to state that driving an SUV was as good as supporting Bin Laden.
I just nodded politely, smiling the same way you look at a child who is trying to explain everything that happened in their day, despite only being 18 months old and not being able to speak English. But then the little hamster in my mind started turning the wheel. Could it be that wasting gasoline is effectively taking up arms against the USA? If this is so, then something must be done about it.
Let’s ban NASCAR.
No, hear me out. Think about it. These vehicles not only burn the highest grade of gasoline available, they burn a lot of it. Let’s be polite and say that each NASCAR car gets about 15 miles to a gallon, around the same that an average SUV gets. (NASCAR doesn’t seem to want to provide fuel efficiency data, so I’ll have to use a close comparison; people in the know that I’ve spoken with tell me it’s closer to 8.)
The average NASCAR race is 450 miles (they seem to alternate between 500′s and 400′s, so we’ll split the difference even though there are more 500′s on the schedules I’ve seen). This means that the average NASCAR driver will burn at least 30 gallons of fuel in a given race, not counting starting laps or caution flags. But, again, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
There are 76 registered cars on the current major NASCAR schedules. Again, let’s be fair and assume that only half of them are going to compete in each race. This means that each major NASCAR race burns at least 1,140 gallons of fuel just for the race itself. Since we have qualifying runs to take into account, let’s round that up to 1,200.
So how many races are we talking? Well, the Nextel Cup Series has 40 races in it, with races scheduled every month except December and January. There are 25 races in the Craftsman Truck Series. There are 34 in the Busch Series (including my favorite, the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie 300 scheduled for 10/15/04), but since these tend to be shorter races we’ll cut the number in half for these calculations. This brings us to the equivalent of 82 average races this year, or about 7 a month.
This gives us an average fuel consumption of nearly 8,000 gallons of gasoline per month, or 96,000 gallons of gasoline per year just for a bunch of good ol’ boys driving fast and turning left! This isn’t even taking into account smaller regional or local events, just the three big circuits! Almost a hundred thousand gallons of gasoline per year just for NASCAR!
U.S. demand for gasoline, while dropping lately, seems to be averaging about 46 million gallons per month. This means we are wasting about 1/50 of 1% of our gasoline usage just for this alleged sport.
Whereas, if I drive an SUV around town, I’m going to be contributing to my local economy. I’m going to be moving goods around, or utilizing services from local businesses. I’m being a productive member of society, helping to keep this nation’s economic engine well-oiled, if you’ll pardon the pun. I’m lubricating the Red, White, and Blue! I’ve got better things to do with my gasoline than just go around in a circle and not actually get anywhere.
So, the next time you want to take my Suburban Assault Vehicle away from me, look at those numbers again and ask yourself who is being a bigger wastrel, me or Kyle Petty. And remember, when you buy a ticket for NASCAR, you’re buying a ticket for Bin Laden.
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