Moonshine Rock

1999 NASCAR Pontiac, driven by Tony Stewart

2000 NASCAR Ford Taurus, driven by Bill Elliott

Ever wonder what happens to old top-of-the-food-chain race cars? A car, meaning the chassis, might be run for three or four years, if it's lucky. For the most competitive races, like Formula 1 and NASCAR, cars are built new for each year. Being as there might be a couple of dozen teams in any class, that means there are liable to be a couple of hundred high performance machines becoming obsolete every year. When they become obsolete, their value plummets, which means ordinary people can afford to buy them.

Sam Smith has a fine story about taking a couple of old NASCAR racecars to a racetrack for a track day. The pictures above are the cars they ran.