NASCAR Takes a New Turn

July 31, Talladega, AL

In a surprise move sure to shake the nation’s largest spectator sport to its core, NASCAR officials announced today that all future races, including all Sprint Cup Series and Nationwide Series events, will be run in a clockwise direction, ensuring that stock cars will only turn to the right in the future.

“It’s a big change, for sure, but it was really a grassroots effort that brought us here,” said NASCAR chairman Brian France. “Once a critical mass of our fans realized that their favorite drivers were veering to the left, today’s changes became inevitable. Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed we didn’t do something about it earlier.”

Fans were generally pleased with the change. “NASCAR’s always been about family,” said Cletus Wheeler, a lifelong enthusiast with a neck tattoo of Dick Trickle. “But once I realized what I was seein’ with all them cars turnin’ to the left all damned day, well, I couldn’t let my kids see that. I had to leave them in the truck with the dog. I mean, in a five-hundred mile race, these drivers are turning left two thousand, even twenty-five hundred times. That just sends entirely the wrong message to the little ones. Hey, y’all don’t know where I could score some meth, do ya?”

Indeed, it was NASCAR’s reputation as a bearer of traditional, American values that was at stake. Or as Brian France explained, “The sport has always strived to uphold the sorts of values our fan based is passionate about, like white male dominance, tidal waves of corporate money, distrust of foreigners with their strange-looking Formula 1 cars, and the wanton, almost reckless consumption of fossil fuels.”

The decision was made public in a small ceremony at the historic Talladega Superspeedway, known for being the longest and fastest of NASCAR’s oval tracks. Lesa Kennedy, President of International Speedway Corporation (NASDAQ: ISCA) which owns Talladega, had this to say. “We picked this track because there’s a lot of history here, but sort of a dark cloud, too. Every fan knows about the Talladega jinx. Ever since Bobby Allison’s wreck back in ’87, we’ve tried everything we could to break it, even had a Catholic priest do an exorcism. But then when this whole going left thing turned up, we thought, maybe we’ve finally nailed it! The last thing anybody wants to see is these athletes going left. You let that go too long and next thing you know the drivers are going to start marrying each other and campaigning for sensible immigration and drug reforms. Then God will really turn the screws, you know?”

There is one group of people who aren’t so happy about the change: NASCAR’s top drivers.

“Right turns? Can cars even do that?” asked a visibly shaken Dale Earnhardt Jr., who’s father, Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed in one of the few recorded instances of a stock car turning to the right in the sport’s sixty-plus year history