NASCAR comes to the really big screen

IMAX film opens Friday

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Sitting next to Jeff Gordon during a qualifying lap.

Taking a turn at Bristol Motor Speedway on Ryan Newman's back bumper at speeds reaching more than 130 mph.

Watching from inside the headquarters of Dale Earnhardt Inc. as machinists sculpt car bodies and engine fabricators tighten every nut and bolt.

A new 3D movie captures it all, taking viewers on a 45-minute spin from the engine shop to the track. The only thing missing is the smell of burning rubber and a cold beer.

"One of the main goals of doing this project was to appeal to new potential fans and be able to take NASCAR and explain the whole sport to someone who has never experienced it," said Paul Brooks, NASCAR's senior vice president and president of NASCAR Digital Entertainment.

"NASCAR 3D: The Imax Experience," which opens Friday at theaters nationwide, is also a primer on the history of stock car racing, its stars and what has gone into making it a multibillion-dollar sport with an estimated 75 million fans.

ALSO  For more on the IMAX project, check out our special page devoted to the film.

The movie was filmed last year over several months and at several racetracks, culminating at Bristol, Tenn., in August.

To do that, Roush Racing built a car to hold the nearly 300-pound Imax camera and enable it to shoot from six different positions, capturing the driver's point of view.

"It's as close to being there without being there," director Simon Wincer said. "It's as close to driving one of those cars without actually driving the cars."

A native Australian, Wincer had never seen a stock car race. Once he did, he said he knew he needed to capture the speed and views from inside the cars in the movie.

NASCAR was founded in 1948 by Bill France, who decided to organize a sport that had been run in ragtag fashion.

The movie, narrated by actor Keifer Sutherland, begins just how the sport did -- with men running moonshine through winding dirt roads in the North Carolina mountains. Their truck winds through backwoods -- a police car is unable to keep up -- and seems to jump right out of the screen.

The film introduces the sport's most famous drivers and racing families, including Junior Johnson, who won 50 races in his career, and the Petty family of Lee, his son "King" Richard (200 career wins), grandson Kyle and great grandson Adam. The younger Petty died at 19 in 2000 when he hit the wall during practice at the New Hampshire International Speedway.

Viewers are taken inside the gymnasiums, where metal weights clank up and down as pit crews train for changing four tires, making adjustments to the car and gassing it up in under 15 seconds.

	Director Simon Wincer, left, along with director of photography James Niehouse, second from right, work with unidentified crew members to evaluate a shot from the middle of the track.

They even get to watch as the tractor-trailers carrying cars and a myriad of equipment are unpacked behind the tracks.

The movie also shows the final laps at the Daytona 500 in 2001 that preceded the death of Dale Earnhardt. In a tribute to the man known as the Intimidator, who is memorialized with a bronze statue at Daytona International Speedway, the screen temporarily fades to black.

Soon, it's time.

Hundreds of thousands of fans fill the grandstands, each wearing the colors and numbers of their favorite drivers on shirts and hats. The infield fills up with RVs and barbecue grills.

"There's Rusty," one fan on the screen yells.

The national anthem is sung, a group of fighter jets buzz overhead, and the drivers slide through the open window of their cars and into their seats.

With a flick of a few switches, 43 engines roar.

The fans stand, answering in approval with their own deafening roar.

"OK, strap in and hold on," Sutherland says. "We're going racing."