Topped Off

He says they aren't Bubbas. "Why? Because we have all our teeth," Daniels jokes, adding that the "reality has changed. It has definitely broadened its appeal. It's big business now."

And the testosterone-loaded mythos of car racing has given way to a throng of female NASCAR junkies as well. According to a recent ESPN Sports poll, 42 percent of fans are now female -- a stat that doesn't go overlooked or unappreciated among its traditional male fans, and is evident at the races.

In the infield, bunnies -- as in Playboy, models, starlets -- stroll about as eye candy wearing big luscious hair and tight skimpy outfits that barely cover the cleavage. Not necessarily fans, usually they're guests or models working for sponsors.

The Race Girl trailer on the midway sells exclusively "Race Girl" logo clothes and gear -- feminine tops, T-shirts, hats, lots of them pink. More than a dozen people line up to buy something, many of them women, some men buying for women.

"It's unreal how many girls are into NASCAR, and how many young girls," says Amy Tripp, 21, a Race Girl saleswoman at the trailer whose dark-haired-model good looks will get her into the restricted drivers' infield later in the race.

Angel Taber, 28, another Race Girl model-saleswoman, says racing revs the libido. "You need the racing excitement, all the intensity and thrill," she says. "You pick a good-looking young driver and you go with it. There's nothing like it."

But the real NASCAR women are in the campgrounds, hanging out with drunk hubbies and tending to the kids, wearing Dale Earnhardt Jr. T-shirts. They're the serious fans who get heat flashes should the King, Richard Petty, appear in his black cowboy hat.

NASCAR, the full realization of modern capitalism, has myriad temptations: Sign up for a MNBA credit card -- the official credit card of NASCAR -- and get a free "Crank 'em Up!" T-shirt. Sign up for the U.S. Army and get an Apache helicopter simulation ride. Inside the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco exhibit, visitors pass closely by two gorgeous models, run into clipboard-bearing staffers asking questions, then take the pit-stop challenge, competing to be the fastest to air-gun a tire onto a sim race car.

Bill Enoch won twice. He's a 25-year-old from Edison, N.J., wearing a Ralph Lauren Polo T-shirt and a Yankees baseball cap. It's his first NASCAR race. He and nine buddies, all first-timers, rented a 38-foot camper and arrived Thursday. "Ten guys in a camper isn't as bad as it sounds," he says, adding that once you've passed out, cramped quarters are irrelevant.

Let the Good Times Roll

By Saturday night, with the main event on the track looming the next afternoon, the scene shifts into overdrive. The sky clears a bit, signaling a green flag for partyers. Time to go fast and furious.

Bonfires glow orange and reaffirm that primordial human impulse to light a fire -- among other primordial impulses. Maybe it's the incessant daytime VAROooom of race cars sending quivers to the gut that by nighttime, with alcohol, pushes rowdy to randy. At times it explodes into a full-blown carnality that's not exactly the PG-rated Disneyesque picture NASCAR proper projects.

Every NASCAR track has its "badlands" -- insider lingo for a hard-core party zone. Lot 10 is the speedway's largest, farthest and darkest campground. The first clue this is it is the '86 Chevy van heading into the entrance, its sides painted with "Bang Bus Party Boys." A regular stream of Roman candles and fireworks is the second.