Why NASCAR May Hurt the Economy

at the NASCAR brickyard race this weekend 43 cars were racing. 43 cars using gasoline to race 400 miles. I could not find how much gasoline the average race car uses nor could I find the average miles per gallon but according to a few web pages the average car gets between 4-6 miles per gallon. Yes, 4-6 miles per gallon and has about 20-25 gallons in each tank. So for the sake of this blog we shall say that the average car runs at 5 miles per gallon with 25 gallons in every automobile. So if all 43 cars finish the race, 4300 gallons of gasoline would have been used for one race. 4300 gallons!

Just to make sure you remember... 4300 gallons of gas. If I were to put that gas in my car then I could drive from New York City to Los Angeles (at 30 mpg) 47 times. 47 times !!! In my hometown gas is currently $2.49 per gallon. So based on our figures, the cost to fuel this race was over $10,700. According to the 2009 projected federal poverty guidelines, a person in the district of Columbia can apply for government assistance if he/she earns less than $10,830.

I don't want to talk about whether or not NASCAR or any form of auto racing is actually a sport. I am not going to doubt that millions of people love watching and partaking in these events. It is a skill/sport and there are statistics that show auto racing is the most popular sport in the United States. This is what scares me... NASCAR sanctions over 1,500 races per year, with varying distances and number of racers but in the end thousands and thousands, maybe even millions of gallons of important gasoline is used to fuel these automobiles. I don't know if NASCAR has a green project but maybe it should. I don't think the government is planning on trying to decrease the fuel emissions at the race track but maybe they should. American car companies seem to have no trouble creating a special engine with 750 horsepower but apparently cannot make a special engine that gets over 50 miles to the gallon and I know they should.

It seems that plenty of people are willing to complain about how much certain athletes are making in every sport but I rarely hear people complain about how much gas goes wasted on the race track. I constantly hear complaints about the price of gasoline, arguments against and for fuel independence and yet no one seems to mind that auto racing uses more gasoline in one day than most use for the entire life of their automobile. In an economy that has seen better days and many people unhappy with the cost of gasoline, does the enjoyment of auto racing outweigh the cost? I am not so sure it does.