Moonshining has been around in the sense we know it now for over a hundred years. With the creation of moonshine and the proliferation of it, many things came with it, one of the most important creations for many people – NASCAR.

While the fact of how exactly moonshine and NASCAR are linked, many agree that it was a because of the need to run away from the law. Moonshine runners had to do what ever they could so that they could get away from “the man” and one easy way was to buy bigger, faster engines for their cars. It was easy to do since the profits from moonshine during the Prohibition were very considerable. And since man has a natural competitive aspect to his character, if one moonshiner says he can out run any cop then another moonshiner is going to try and challenge him to see how great he really is. This type of competitive nature is what sprung the creation of NASCAR.

After Prohibition, many people were left out in the cold when alcohol became legal. There were many people who still had super fast cars but nothing to do with them. That’s when competitive racing really started to grow. In December 1947, the first official rules for NASCAR were created in Florida by Big Bill Francis, who is responsible for creating NASCAR, and many others. A few months later the first official NASCAR race was held on Daytona Beach. The first NASCAR track was in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, where one of the largest seizures of moonshine occurred – over 7,100 gallons of white whiskey.

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