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Comment by joncrane | Hacker News Reader

"Funny" story: DC Solar was a big sponsor of NASCAR in multiple series.

Ross Chastain, an amazing driver who was a watermelon farmer, was finally getting his big break and going to a very good car with full season sponsorship from DC Solar. (Most drivers in order to succeed need some kind of sponsorship connection and this was one of those amazing talents with few connections guys so fans were super excited).

Literally within a few weeks of the announcement of sponsorship came the news that DC Solar had been raided by the FBI and the sponsorship was off.

Ross Chastain is back running subpar equipment sponsored by his family's watermelon farm business.

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Sad. Can the HN community sponsor a car. Crazy idea maybe but we are not known for messing around.

That would be interesting to see. I'll pledge $1k right now, I'd like to see something like this get off the ground.

Well since I rustled jimmies, I'll add another $2k for the two people who downvoted me. I'm pledging $3k now.

What would the HN community get out of it? If nothing but the feels, then that's called donating.

I feel like HN is filled with people who couldn't care less about NASCAR. That being said, crowdfunding racers isn't out of the question, look at Josh Wise and the Dogecoin car.

As you can tell by the reactions, HN is not Reddit. Perhaps make a post over there, they’re most likely more receptive to this story.

The r/NASCAR subreddit is quite a fan of Ross. I wouldn't be surprised if they already had something going.

Nascar, to me, is a celebration of pointless CO2 emissions.

It is literally people driving around in a circle in last-century technology, mainly as an advertising platform for selling inefficient non-race vehicles.

We can do better in 2019, and I'd personally be ok if the whole sport shuttered, not just one team.

> Nascar, to me, is a celebration of pointless CO2 emissions.

Doesn’t have to be. It could be a celebration of pointless conversion of electric energy into mechanical energy!

The engineering and technical prowess of a NASCAR team would absolutely astonish you, it is hardly as you describe. I work closely with people in racing and am constantly amazed at what they are doing.

The entertainment provided per amount of CO2 is probably better than lots of other forms of entertainment, since there's thousands watching only dozens of cars. Like I'm sure skydiving or going on a cruise is worse for the environment per person.

> driving around in a circle in last-century technology

As a criticism I think this lacks perspective. Presumably you want them to be driving electric cars in a circle. Electric cars are 19th century technology:

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-02/the-history-birth-dea...

Formula E is good. It's improving year by year and the Gen2 car is a clear improvement over the Gen1 car. You can watch past races on their YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/FIAFormulaE

But let's not kid ourselves. Formula E is not yet at the level of Formula 1.

I think GP means to say, it's not about the technology's past, but about its future. ICE is last century because its future is diminishing as this century unfolds. Electrics are on the rise and presumably will be the replacement to ICE. Thus they're not a last-century technology even if they were invented in the 19th.

I know electric cars are the future, but they're just boring compared to a smoking, snorting, shaking, thundering ICE engine.

I quit watching hydro races when they switched from Allison V-12s to jet engines. Maybe if they added afterburners, it would make it fun again :-)

No surprise I love steam locomotives, too. Diesel-electric, sorry.

Since we live in the future, I propose different shapes than a circle.

I think we could drive in a figure eight (turn left AND right), or better yet create a Mobius race course.

An amazing innovation of 1970 was the Chaparral 2J race car which used a secondary engine and fans to generate up to 1.5G of downforce.

I'm sure (49 years later) we could come up with some interesting techniques to keep the cars "up on the road" if we go to 3 dimensions.

Its called F1

> last-century technology

I imagine you don't like Polo much either, but I still find this to be a bit of an odd critique - some sporting events go back thousands of years. In my experience, the intersection of sports and modern technology tends to be controversy - performance enhancing drugs, swimsuits, and the like. What sports do you watch that showcase modern technology?

Nice thought but it's not just money. Motorsport is it's own world and you have to participate more than just throwing money at something.

Secondly, the Venn diagram of NASCAR fans and HN readers shows very little overlap. I am a fan but I don't pretend to think people upvoted me because I mentioned NASCAR. It's because I validated their negative feelings towards DC Solar by giving another example. Maybe bonus points for the quaintness of a family Watermelon farming business sponsoring the scion's racing career.

The best part about Chastain is his amazing ability to take sub par equipment and be competitive with it, he is a rising star for sure

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