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By John D. Thomas

There is no debating the popularity of stock car racing. What was once merely a regional religion for Deep South gearheads is now a shared faith nationwide, worshipped by both yuppies and rednecks alike. But as Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. roar around in circles battling for supremacy in NASCAR's elite Winston Cup series, a nagging question still hounds stock car racing -- is it really a sport?

You have to admit that most of the top drivers are pretty wimpy looking, and the cars are designed naturally to track to the left, so what does a driver need other than a big set of stones to pilot one of these supercharged jalopies to victory lane?

With the Winston Cup in full swing, I decided to put my sport/not a sport NASCAR reservations to rest with a visit to one of the numerous stock car driving schools around the country. I chose Monster Racing's camp at the Nashville Superspeedway for several reasons. First, the concrete track is only about two years old, so it had to be in good condition. Also, unlike some schools, Monster Racing's cars are totally legit, each one having been driven in Winston Cup or Busch Grand National competition by the likes of a Kenny Wallace or a Michael Waltrip. Finally, one of the school's driving instructors is Sammie Lee Bradley (pictured at right), a sexy country music video regular and the former Miss Nude World.

Upon arriving at the track, students are first taken around the speedway by an instructor in a big 15-passenger van. A nervous silence settles over the group as the van speeds out of the pits, but when the van thunks onto the track's 14-degree bank, a woman in the back blurts involuntarily, "Oh, my goodness." Another woman looks at her husband and asks dryly, "Honey, did you take your blood pressure medicine?"

As the van zips around the track at about 70 mph, students tightly grip their seats for support and listen as the instructor barks out information -- "Keep it in fourth gear, do not downshift." "Stay six lengths behind the person in front of you and follow them at all times. Unless they go into the wall. Don't go there." "Easy on the gas and easy off the gas." The instructor also shows the line we should take and makes sure we know to stay beneath the orange cones that line the track. "If you smack into one of these cones," he warns, "you'll be wearing it later as the class dunce."

After that crash, er, short course in stock car driving, students are herded into a conference room where they are fitted with thick, flame-retardant driving suits. The coveralls are bulky, hot and uncomfortable, and students end up looking more like the Michelin Man than Tony Stewart. The final stage before racing is a safety briefing from Ricky Haynes, a former stock car racer and the school's chief instructor, whose racing suit fits him just fine.