What are we thinking with this auto-racing thing?

Our travels took us to West Union, Ohio (pop. 2,903) recently where I met a mechanic who worked on the racing crew for “Tiny” Lund. Lund was a well-known stock car driver during the 1960s and ‘70s. He was a household name in racing circles, and won a good number of Grand National events.

The mechanic told me he traveled with the Lund crew all over the country, and back then it would cost one million dollars a year (entry fees, crew salaries, car parts…) to keep one car competitive. Now it’s closer to eight million.

However, with winning prizes, product endorsements, profit from television… the mechanic said that a good number of the car owners today make many millions above these basic operating costs. This, in turn, indicates how popular auto-racing has become.

And this, in turn, also begs the question: Why? Why did Tiny Lund risk his life spinning around a track at 175 mph? When you think about it for these drivers, the all too real corollary to the action on the track would be a spinning gun chamber in a Russian Roulette suicide game.

I mean when you strip away all the rationalizations, isn’t that exactly what it amounts to?

The ‘gun’ finally fired for Tiny Lund in a high speed, fiery crash at Alabama’s Talledega 500 on Aug. 10, 1975. He left behind a wife and a young son.

And what about all those racing “enthusiasts?” Their participation (buying the Indianapolis 500 tickets, the Daryl Earnhardt Jr. #8 t-shirts, the Jeff Gordon hats…) allows the Russian Roulette game to go on, and on, and…

So in a very real sense, these enthusiasts are active participants, or rather: accessories – helping hold what, for a significant number of race car drivers, becomes – the ‘smoking gun.’

And while society doesn’t see this whole thing as a legal issue, and most churches don’t see it as a moral issue, does God?

I’d have to believe: yes.

I mean risking your life for no good purpose (Testing oil viscosity at 225 mph?), with the possibility of leaving wives widowed, children orphaned… would seem to me kind of up there on the ‘not very moral scale.’

What God might also see as kind of up there on the ‘not very moral scale,’ I believe, is all the wasted time and talent put in by the race crews. (The day I’m writing this, USA Today ran a sports story explaining there are now elaborate “Pit-Stop Schools” to teach students how to be race crew members. NASCAR Technical Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, offers a 39-week core course for about $20,000.)

These guys, and gals, have been blessed with all kinds of engineering and mechanical aptitude that could be applied to, say, helping develop, and work on, better non-polluting electric cars, solar-driven farm tractors, and the like. Or they could be developing, and working on, better bicycles. Or they could be using the aptitude to help develop and install better Third World village solar systems, water filtration systems, and so on.

Yet these race crewmembers spend most of their time and talent helping, in essence, ‘oil’ the Russian Roulette gun chamber.

And if all of this isn’t bad enough, what about all the impulsive Russian Roulette games going on up and down I-75 every day? What about all the young (and old) race car enthusiasts who, emulating their NASCAR “heroes,” also risk death stepping down a little too hard on the accelerator of their 280ZX, spinning on a wet pavement, and dying in a fiery crash – that also takes two young children traveling in a car in the other lane.

What is our “need for speed” really costing us in lives; in orphaned and maimed children; in wasted time and talent -- and in immortal souls, for that matter?

Maybe it’s time we stop spinning the gun chamber and take the checkered flag on auto racing in America, for good.

Joe Schriner writes about moral and social issues from the backroads of America.