Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

NASCAR is an American sport.

Sure, it has drivers from different reaches of the world and fans from even further reaches but at the end of the day NASCAR is not a worldwide event. Motorsports as a whole on the other hand has a bit more appeal on the worldwide level. Series such as Formula One and IndyCar have a more diverse audience than that of NASCAR even though NASCAR does fall into the Motorsports category.

This past weekend I had a friend visiting from Scotland. My friend who we will call Adam for the sake of this piece is your average male that would fall into the 25-35 male demographic. Adam played sports in high school (soccer) and he follows sport in his daily life now (soccer and rugby). Although Adam likes sports he never really followed Motorsports and before this weekend he had never seen a NASCAR event.

Before Adam and I watched the Brickyard 400 on Sunday I explained to him that he was by no means obligated to watch this with me. While drowning myself in the world of NASCAR is something that I enjoy, I by no means want to force that on anyone else. Adam however was ‘cool’ with it despite not knowing much of anything about the sport or auto racing in general.

Here in the United States those who don’t follow NASCAR are still exposed to the running jokes surrounding the sport. Ask a non-NASCAR fan in the U.S. about the sport and I’m sure they will quip about it involving rednecks and going left all of the time. Adam didn’t have those preconceptions though, in fact all that he knew about NASCAR was that “one of the important drivers died during their Super Bowl when I was younger.” Yes, Dale Earnhardt did pass away during the Daytona 500 (NASCAR’s version of the Super Bowl) when he was younger.

While typing race notes during the Brickyard 400 I became enthralled with some of the comments and questions posed by Adam. Adam being an intelligent human being understood that the drivers would be racing on a track one someone would win but past that I don’t think he ever put much though into what a NASCAR race was. As the race continued on so did his questions and observations and eventually my NASCAR notes turned into keeping tracks of Adam’s thoughts and questions.

In this piece you will see what it’s like to see NASCAR through the eyes of someone who has never watched the sport before.