There is no doubt James Holland has been a Hardcore Race Fan for the majority of his existence. Attending his first race at the age of four or five in Kokomo, Indiana, the thrill, excitement and noise of midget cars screaming around the track hooked a young James Holland and made him a Hardcore Race Fan for life.

Growing up around racing, Holland’s father purchased an old horse track and converted it to a half-mile race track in 1948. Just nine years old at the time, Holland thought back to the excitement and difficulties his father’s track presented.

“Back in those days it wasn’t as bad as it is today,” Holland said of his father’s track.  “He had three partners, but bought them out after the first year.”

His father had never driven a race car, but saw the opportunity to build something that would fill that need for speed. Providing a facility to race at in the earliest days of the sport, Holland’s father helped nurture the racing bug inside his son.

“We had a little bit of bad luck on that race track,” Holland recalled. “The first lap of the first race a guy got killed. The car rolled over, the cars just weren’t safe back then.”

After spending years at his father’s track, Holland made the move to Florida and went racing on his own. Running street stocks and four cylinders, Holland was a true ‘do-it-yourself’ racer. Competing at the local short tracks, Holland did all he could until “the pockets went dry.”

In the years he spent running his own car, Holland did taste a bit of success. Holland humbly admitted to winning two or three races, adding, “I had a third-place car, never could get it much more than that unless someone didn’t show up.”

Once money ran up and he decided to stop racing, Holland stayed in the sport by helping out his friends around the track. Lending a hand at various shops in the evenings, Holland would head to the track on the weekends and help in any way possible. One such friend, Marion Edwards Jr., was killed at the New Smyrna Speedway after his car burst into flames.  Holland remembered his lost friend, indicating the speedway ran a memorial race for his fallen fellow racer for a number of years.

A fan of the local short tracks, Holland attended his first NASCAR event at the 1965 Southern 500 at the Darlington Raceway. Thinking back on that day, Holland explained, “I had just climbed back up onto the car [in the infield] after getting a can of beer and Cale Yarborough went over the wall. ‘There he goes!’”

Following the sport for years after his initial experience, Holland became more involved in NASCAR during the mid-nineties. Working with Curtis Key and Key Motorsports in the NASCAR Busch Series (now Nationwide Series) and Turnage Racing in the Truck Series, Holland was able to travel around to a number of tracks on the circuit while getting a different perspective of the sport.

These days the 68-year-old does not really go to the track any more. While he still takes his family out to the local track every now and then, he now relies on the television coverage for his NASCAR racing. “DVR,” Holland said, “I watch the whole race in half an hour.”

For someone who has seen racing since its earliest days, Holland feels today’s NASCAR does not live up to the years past.

“The new racing doesn’t thrill me that much,” Holland admitted. “I don’t like the cars, the drivers don’t seem to have the personalities the old guys have, it’s just not the same.”

Holland explained he could remember a time when Bobby and Donnie Allison would visit one of his friend’s houses during the winter, but does not see today’s drivers doing anything like that, making it personal.

Looking back at the men that helped build this sport, Holland believes NASCAR should do more to help the veterans.

“I think that’s a gimmie, it’s easy. They need some help,” Holland argued. “There’s enough money out there to do it, especially with the France family. I think they ought to set away a percentage from each race to help them, and they could, it wouldn’t hurt them a bit.  If each track at each race set maybe a half a percent out, it would add up. It’s not going to hurt them a whole lot.”

A Hardcore Race Fan for nearly six decades, James Holland has seen the sport transition from the small tracks scattered around the country to the multi-million dollar industry it has become today. Talking with Holland it is clear he is a true fan of the sport and continues that love for racing that was instilled in him at such a young age.