WHEELS: A Season on Nascar's Winston Cup Circuit [Hardcover]

Paul Hemphill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 4, 1997

Focuses on the drama of the 1996 thirty-one-race season as forty-five-year-old Dale Earnhardt aimed to break the legendary Richard Petty's record for championship seasons, while the upstart twenty-four-year-old Jeff Gordon sought to beat Earnhardt and earn his first championship. 35,000 first printing."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Paul Hemphill begins his exploration of the high-octane world of high-stakes stock car racing with an image of ominous clouds, and those clouds never fully lift, at least metaphorically. This is a sport going through serious growing pains. The more it's marketed and sold down the fast track of deep-pocketed sponsors, corporate logos, and media extravaganzas, the more it distances itself from its roots--think Southern lawmen chasing moonshiners--and the pure joys of competition. Corporate overload aside, Hemphill captures the excitement, the noise, and the thrill of racing almost viscerally. He's especially fascinating on stock car history, and his portraits of the drivers and their rivalries never idle.

From Library Journal

Stock-car racing is the fastest-growing U.S. spectator sport and has been the subject of several books in the last few years. Here, Hemphill (The Heart of the Game: The Education of a Minor-League Ballplayer, LJ 2/1/96) portrays the sport in the style of a novelist while reporting on the events of the 1996 racing season. The result makes good reading but provides little in the way of new information or even a new angle. Fry Gaillard's Kyle: At 200 mph (St. Martin's, 1993) and Peter Golenbock's American Zoom (LJ 7/93) both used first-person analysis to cover the subject. Hemphill's treatment of tobacco company sponsorship problems is informative and timely but, ultimately, this is a book for fans only. However, public libraries may find that they have many NASCAR fans among their patrons. For popular sports collections.?Eric C. Shoaf, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence, R.I.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1St Edition edition (June 4, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684830175
• ISBN-13: 978-0684830179
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,864,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WHEELS, December 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: WHEELS: A Season on Nascar's Winston Cup Circuit (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book. WHEELS is a non-fiction story about a year on the NASCAR Winston Cup Circuit. It is full of rip roaring action and excitement. the author writes it lap by lap, wreck by wreck, race by race. I thought the wrecks were the mast interesting parts of this book, followed by the fixing of the cars. The author shows true spirit for all the tracks and drivers. Some of the drivers in this book are Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mike Skinner, Steve Park, Dale Jarret, and Darrell Waltrip. Some of the tracks are Martinsville Speedway, Darlington Speedway, Daytona Speedway, Talladega Speedway, and Atlanta Motor Speedway. I think every NASCAR fan should read this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book with some technical glitches., April 13, 1998

By 

David E. Fleenor - See all my reviews

This review is from: WHEELS: A Season on Nascar's Winston Cup Circuit (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and its style of switching back and forth from the 96 season to historical background and vignettes of the small time racer. A couple of nits to pick. The summary of the CART-Indy 500 dispute was just plain wrong and should have been caught in the editing process. (The problem was not that Indy Speedway wanted to open up qualifying, just the opposite. He guranteed spots to his IRL drivers even if their speeds were slower. )Second, the first part of the season was covered in meticulous detail, but the last half was summarized. It seemed like the author was looking to wind it up. These points aside, this was a very well written and entertaining book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, May 12, 2005

By 

Scott Faircloth (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: WHEELS: A Season on Nascar's Winston Cup Circuit (Hardcover)

Once again Paul Hemphill caught my attention with his book Wheels. Paul is a great author and he made me want to stop what I was doing and get back to reading this book.

This is a fantastic book and I loved every minute of it. Wheels is a book that has a adrenaline rush that keeps on going and going in till you have to stop reading the book. I loved how Paul made me fell like I was in the drivers seat the hole time it was great. This book is about a season of racing on the Winston Cup circuit. Wheels covers many race car drivers and it tells there story from when they were on the old dirt tracks to when they started driving professional. Some of the drivers that it covers are Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, Rusty Wallace, and Terry Labonte. The main driver that the book covers is Dale Earnhardt and he is a fantastic driver.

Earnhardt has a great personality. He is always making friends where ever he goes, it could be on the track or some where like his neighbors house. Dale had a wish that consisted of him beating Jeff Gordon in the points so he could win the Championship and it was a great part in the book. That particular moment in the book was my favorite because Paul had me on toes the whole time. Paul was explaining it like you were watching it right in front of your eyes.

I also like how Paul Hemphill included all the tracks and how he emphasized the good ones. The best track was Bristol Motor Speedway and it had a great race there. Paul included that Bristol was the shortest track on the circuit that was only a half mile long. He took us through all the bumps and turns and of course the wrecks. He also included the championship race that was at Daytona Speedway and it was the most exciting part of the whole season.

This as a fantastic book and I would recommend it to only the people that like sitting down watching a 500 lap race with a nice cold drink in one hand and the other one for throwing stuff ant the television.