The 2000s are so hot right now. The fashion. The music. The complicated geopolitics. Hell, even Bird Flu is back (which is why eggs are expensive again)! And if you’d like a Jägerbomb of aughts nostalgia I have some great news for you. The best news, really.
Are you busy right now? Do you have approximately four hours, four minutes, and forty-six seconds? Can you move something? I’m sure that whatever it is you’re doing right now is in no way better than the full Fox broadcast of the 2007 Daytona 500. Is Nicolas Cage going to show up in your office today? I don’t think so. He’s too busy kicking off the 2007 Daytona 500.
As we’ve discovered lately around here, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to find good-quality clips of great NASCAR moments online. If you’re lucky, you can find some in a low fps format, like this shortened replay of the 2007 Daytona 500. But the whole thing in glorious 720p at 60 fps? Good fortune has decided to shine on you my friends, for you are alive to witness this miracle of Millennial nostalgia.
If you’d forgotten or never knew in the first place, this is the Nextel Cup Series. Remember Nextel? This was a wireless company and its major differentiating technology was essentially walkie-talkies for adults that alerted you with a distinctive chirp. Man, good times.
I’m embedding it below, but the link is here. If you don’t have the time right this moment to watch it let me pull out some of the greatest moments.
Right off the bat, let’s please enjoy that it starts with this:
That’s right, it’s Nicolas Cage promoting Ghostrider, which is definitely one of the films of 2007. It’s like someone knew that making a Marvel movie would work and then thought the best move would be to turn it over to Cage and the guy who directed Grumpy Old Man. Truly excellent.
This graphic is pretty sweet. I feel like the same person who did COPS did this chyron. The background here is that NASCAR was making bonkers money and all of a sudden decided it wanted to discourage cheating. It did this by testing a bunch of cars after the Gatorade Duels (how you qualify for the race) and NASCAR found a crap ton of cheating as CNN at the time noted:
Last week, one of the sport’s most popular drivers and team owners got nabbed just after qualifying for the Daytona 500. NASCAR said Michael Waltrip’s No. 55 team was using a fuel additive, a huge no-no.
On Wednesday, Waltrip’s crew chief, David Hyder, was fined a NASCAR-record $100,000, and the team was docked 100 points, more than half the number of points a driver can get for winning a race. Those points are crucial, considering that NASCAR allows the top 35 teams in points into the 43-car field each week, no matter what their qualifying times are.
Oops. Waltrip, for his credit, accepted the penalty and finished the race with negative points.
Before we even get to the race we get a Breakaway-era Kelly Clarkson doing “Since U Been Gone” in a short set as part of the Great American Race Nextel Tribute to America (for the troops!). I accidentally played this back at 1.5x speed and it’s somehow even better. Kelly Clarkson has pipes.
I guess I should mention that Big & Rich does the national anthem, though this isn’t a particular 2000s-coded thing since Big & Rich are just part of the NASCAR package. If you go to a NASCAR race and don’t see either Big & Rich or Florida Georgia Line you should ask for your money back.
Oh, there’s a race. Did I mention that the pace car was a C6 Corvette?
It’s the only car there with headlights, which started to get dicey as they went into overtime. But more on that later.
Here’s Kyle Busch doing the “Hang 10” sign:
Amazing.
This was the Cup Series debut for Juan Pablo Montoya in NASCAR, who had left Formula One after an unhappy experience at McLaren.
There’s also Mark Martin racing a Chevy! The car mix is incredible as you get Toyota Camrys bumping Ford Fusions, Dodge Chargers, and Chevy Monte Carlos SS.
I don’t want to give away the ending because it was, at the time, the closest finish in Daytona 500 history. I’ll just say that it’s incredible and worth watching. One piece of the ending I will giveaway is that, unlike today, NASCAR officials were in no hurry to throw the flag.
Clint Boyer’s car was upside down and on fire and NASCAR was like “Let’s see how this plays out.”
I don’t know how long this video will last, so please enjoy it while you can.
All screengrabs Fox/NASCAR via YouTube
Thanks for this video tip. Already saw the race, but will watch this again.
And Mikey Waltrip got everything he deserved when he tried to become a team owner.
And screw Kyle Busch, whining little ferret faced weasel. YMMV
OK, but my boss is going to be pissed.
From an editorial perspective, I’m still a bit confused why Autopian is trying to hamfist Nascar coverage onto the site. As noted by the 11 (now 12) comments, we kinda don’t care….
Love motorsports but there is a reason Nascar is dying…unless Parker is going to show up and do some super fun insider stories, I think the overall reaction to Nascar here is “meh.”
A lot of us give a shit. But maybe don’t comment every time…
I definitely agree with the inclusion of NASCAR coverage on the site.
I like it and want to write about it. It’s not really more complicated than that.
I recant…..forgot a rule I stole from Youtube sommelier Andre Mack: Don’t yuck other people’s yum. My apologies….
All good, but I’ll get Parker here to write some more stuff then!
Please do!
I miss that era but I think I’m probably the only person on earth who doesn’t miss DW calling races.
This is why Autopian is the best source of everything. This is awesome.
You can watch this, and indeed most every race there is footage of, on the NASCAR Classics website. There’s also a good number of races on the NASCAR Classics official YouTube page and there are plenty of channels up with classic races either in part or in full. There was a small copyright dust-up when the Classics website launched, but my understanding is that was resolved pretty quickly, and NASCAR isn’t too concerned with issuing copyright strikes for old content.
Did Kelly Clarkson cover a Rainbow song? Or am I just older than dirt?
you are either older than dirt or just slid a dry, dry joke under the crack in the door
And it even had everyone’s favorite road course ringer (as they used to call them) Boris Said running in it, racing the very ’00s No Fear car.
It was the start of Montoya’s first full Cup season, but actually not his Cup debut!
He ran the 2006 season finale at Homestead in an extra Ganassi car – basically identical to Casey Mears’ Havoline No. 42 (that he was about to take over) but numbered 30 and with a Colombian flag-inspired stripe on it.
He crashed out, iirc.
Ahhh, thank you!
Which the people who used them always had turned up to 11, along with the speakerphone volume.
What better way to tell everyone within 100 yards “I work in construction”?
I suddenly have plans this evening
Same here.
And really appreciate your writing. Please continue to do so.
Thank you, I’ll have one for you this weekend haha
No, I don’t want to relive that finish again. I still remember being at my uncle’s house watching this live during my cousin’s birthday party going through all 5 stages of grief in about 10 minutes over that finish.
I don’t care if it makes me sound like one of the boomers on facebook, but the gen 4 era was the end of “real NASCAR”. I still watch it but it’s not the same and it’s not as good and unfortunately, it will never be that good ever again. Still to this day, if you ask me to close my eyes and picture in my head what a NASCAR looks and sounds like, I’ll picture an early 2000s car with that signature boom tube howl every time.
Every single time I watch it, I think Mark will beat him to the line.