AllMovie

Stock car racing is one of the biggest and fastest-growing sports in America, and after years of popularity in the South and the Midwest, NASCAR has come to dominate auto racing throughout the country. But few modern day fans know about the wild and wooly early days of stock car racing. Many of the earliest champions of the stock car circuit learned their driving skills by delivering moonshine whiskey in souped-up sedans designed to outrun the police. Moonshine drivers began racing for fun on improvised tracks on weekends, and in time this grew into the first racing circuit in America. Many early safety precautions were developed only after major accidents, drivers were known to play wild pranks on one another, rivalries were rarely friendly, and one noted driver used to run races with a monkey in his passenger seat for good luck. Filmmaker John Lyons Murphy offers a look into a side of auto racing history most corporate sponsors prefer to ignore in Moonshine To The Finish Line: The Unofficial Beginnings Of NASCAR, which includes rare footage of early stock car races, vintage photographs and interviews with racing legends Junior Johnson, Bobby Allison and Tiger Tom Pistone. The film received its world premiere at the 2010 Palm Beach International Film Festival.