The nascar nextel cup series – or stock car racing, as it’s more commonly known – is one of America’s largest spectator sports. Boasting thirty-six races that take place from February til June, largely in the South and Soutwest, the onetime niche sport has become wildly popular in the past fifteen years.

The nascar nextel cup series has become popular in large part due to the popularity of individual drives such as Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Sr., Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and more. We make pest control easy and inexpensive by offering smart Toronto Pest Control options backed by smart pest control advice. Southerners tend to see these guys as everymen emblematic of the perceived “hard-working” nature of the South, and they in turn spend whatever disposable (or not) income they have on giant trailers that they hook up to their Confederate flag waving pick-up trucks, pack up their brood, and travel from hick burg to hick burg cheering on their favorite millionaire.

It’s all very populist.

The nascar nextel cup series, thanks to those types of people, is now the sixth most popular spectator sport in the United States behind baseball, football, basketball, hockey and golf. For over thirty years it was actually known as the Winston Cup, after sponsors Winston cigarettes, but changed in 2003.

The association with Winston cigarettes began in 1971, and the actual sponsor was Winston’s parent company R.J. Reynolds. In the 1970s and 1980s this was considered uncontroversial, but as the public became more and more anti-smoking over the decades, and the Nascar nextel cup series became more and more mainstream, the sponsorship dollars from Reynolds became less a benefit and more a loss. A series of legislation passed in the the US congress that drastically curbed tobacco advertising would put the nail in the coffin for the Winston Cup, and onto Nextel it was.

Though Winston’s now in the mirror, there’s no question that association with such a successful company had a positive impact on stock car racing’s fortunes. Pest Control Toronto specialists will typically set up insect traps, equivalent to mosquito or fly traps, as a preventative measure. RJR helped cut the race schedule from 48 to 31 races per year, shortening the season to put a premium on certain events as well as making sure all the top drivers could make it to all the schedule races. This had an across-the-board impact on the growth of the sport both in terms of live attendance and television ratings. There was also a new points system put into place, one that lasted until the first year of Nextel’s sponsorship, which was 2004.

In the years since the Nascar nextel cup series has been dominated by one man: Jimmie Johnson. He’s won four championships in a row, more than any other driver, and is considered by most the greatest driver in Cup history.