Why do the car numbers on the roof of the Cup cars face the infield and not the fans or spotters? ?

Question

Why do the car numbers on the roof of the Cup cars face the infield and not the fans or spotters? ?

Answer 1

because they used to count laps by hand and the scorers were in the infield

Answer 2

Waltrip as usual was wrong. Scoring is done from the infield Rowdys #1 fan is correct, the numbers are on the roof for all for the high bank tracks that make the elevated spotter stands and the sides of the cars difficult to see. Electronic timing makes this redundant but these systems have failed and the score sheets are NASCARs final word on track position.

Answer 3

i won't say i completely understand the answer, but this question has been asked a couple of times in the past week: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

as i wrote there:

that was a email question on "this week in nascar" on monday. chad knaus said the numbers faced the infield because that's where the scorers sit. michael waltrip wasn't so sure because at some tracks, the scorers don't sit in the infield area, plus the spotters are usually on the outside as well. so they said they'd research it, and they did, and the answer is in the "extra coverage" from the show on nascar.com: http://www.nascar.com/video/cup/2008/08/...

in that clip, michael waltrip said they called john darby and he said they were that way because of the banking in the turns, just as vp tom g stated in his answer to the question above.

Answer 4

man this was on a race question once, if im not mistaken it was becuase the marshalls and reporters and all used to sit on the inside, so thats the way the numbers were painted on the cars