Topped Off

Three men on a beer run drive by in a golf cart, almost tipping out the guy seated in the rear with his arm around a life-size blow-up sex doll. "Can I borrow her a minute?" someone yells out.

Several campers down, behind the Home Depot back lot, a jury-rigged plywood and canvas shelter with three good ol' boys sitting in front sports a crudely made sign: "Show Us Your Boobs!" with the all-important addendum: "Women Only." A twentysomething guy with a huge cowboy hat zooms by on a Harley-like minibike, forcing fans on a walk to jump out of the way.

Wear Old Shoes

The "Big American Speed Circus" is what Jeff MacGregor calls it. A Sports Illustrated writer and author of the new book "Sunday Money," he and his photographer wife, Olya Evanitsky, toured for 40 weeks from one NASCAR race to the next a couple years back -- to 36 races at 23 tracks in 18 states. They'd park their 26 1/2 -foot Lazy Daze motor home in the campgrounds and set out to peel back the layers of stereotype and mythology in search of what fuels this quintessentially American sport.

At the root of the NASCAR carrying-on is a tribal instinct, says MacGregor. "There is something in the core of the human spirit that needs to rub up intimately against members of the tribe," he says in a phone interview from his home in New York rather than slog around Dover International's sociological petri dish. "It's that bone-deep need to be together."

That said, he adds that much -- though not all -- of that togetherness has a distinctly "Animal House" quality.

"Imagine someone vomiting on your feet. You are going to see a concentration of alcohol consumption unlike anything you are used to unless you're a college sophomore," he says, conceding that every speedway has its own decibel and drunken intensity level, Dover being in the middle of the pack.

"But at the core of the sport is this drawlin' and brawlin' party-weekend sensibility," says MacGregor. "Go back to the roots of what this sport is and where it came from -- it is supposed to be a party and something approached with reckless abandon."

Good Ol' Girls

Saturday morning at 6, the fog is lifting and instead of pouring rain the fans began pouring through the front gates to the speedway. By 9 a.m., speedway traffic is backed up on Route 13.

Bruce Shrewsbury drove his camper down from Morrisville, Pa., a week early to get a good spot, went home, then came back. "Rednecks in Delaware? Uh-unh," says the 6-foot-plus, better than 250-pound conveyor-belt worker. "I would guarantee anybody who is making that statement has never been to a Nextel Cup event."

Many of these fans aren't Bubba stereotypes, or resist being thought of as such, thanks mainly to Bubbafication of the entire nation. Some seem to just revel in the role -- such as those early-'90s stockbrokers who'd dress down, get high and head to Grateful Dead shows, or dentists who will take the Harley to Daytona for Biker Week. Follow the money and you find at least some of these fans aren't blowin' their last paycheck for a weekend at the races. Hardly any have a rag for a gas cap.

Gate prices per person plus a vehicle campground pass at the Nextel MBNA America 400 at Dover cost $200 to $250 for the whole weekend of races.

Rick Daniels and four thirtysomething NASCAR-addicted Connecticut Yankee pals are camping in his 36-footer behind T.J. Maxx just outside the speedway gates.