The Poor Man's NASCAR

Inside The Weird World Of Lawn Mower Racing

Head down to a county fair in Texas, and you may find helmeted men racing through dirt tracks at bristling speeds on, of all vehicles, lawn mowers. The pastime is a strange motorsport that began as a joke, according to a July 2013 profile of the sport in the Wall Street Journal.

It was meant to poke fun of the 'slickness' of professional motorsports but eventually became a 'mini-NASCAR' with its own trading cards and advertisers. Found in many parts of the Midwest and South, lawn mower racing has a particularly strong following among old-timers in Texas.