Running illegal moonshine created great drivers and cars, and stock car racing started to gain some traction as a sport.

So much so that the community of Daytona Beach would host their first-ever stock car race. Soon a driver named Bill France would be organising regular races there.

It wouldn't be long though until Atlanta challenged Daytona as the centre of the stock car racing world, producing drivers, and bootleggers such as Lloyd “Lighting Seay and "Reckless Roy" Hall.

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Resources

There is a lot on the web about NASCAR’s early days, including a heap of contemporary sources. Rising above all that and a lot more accessible if you want to learn more are two key books, Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France by Daniel S. Pierce and Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR by Neal Thompson.

For more on how the moonshine industry worked, North Carolina Moonshine: An Illicit History by Frank Stephenson Jr. and Barbara Nichols Mulder is fascinating.

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