The story behind a preacher's prerace prayer that lives in NASCAR infamy
By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer
It started like most race-track invocations. Pastor Joe Nelms, in his deep Southern drawl, opened with a word of thanks.
"Heavenly father, we thank you tonight for all your blessings you send, and all things give thanks," the prayer began.
But just like cars after the drop of the green flag, Nelms hit the gas and swiftly turned the focus to racing.
The prayer continued: "So we want to thank you tonight for these mighty machines that you brought before us. Thank you for the Dodges and the Toyotas. Thank you for the Fords, and most of all, we thank you for Roush and Yates partnering to give us the power that we see before us tonight.
"Thank you for GM Performance Technology and R07 engines. Thank you for Sunoco racing fuel and Goodyear tires that bring performance and power to the track."
And then it got kind of ... racy?
"Lord, I want to thank you for my smokin' hot wife tonight, Lisa, my two children, Eli and Emma – or, as we like to call them, the Little Es."
The prayer then returned to the invocations most race fans hear on a weekly basis.
"Lord, I pray and bless the drivers, and use them tonight. May they put on a performance worthy of this great track."
But Pastor Joe Nelms wasn’t finished. He had one more racing line left before he would drop the mic.
"In Jesus' name. Boogity, boogity, boogity. Amen."
And there it was, in 53 seconds, the prayer that would live in infamy.
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People might have known the Nashville Superspeedway for some wild race finishes or its guitar trophies or the time Kyle Busch smashed that guitar while celebrating a win in victory lane.
But this 2011 prerace invocation? This combination ode to racing, ode to the Higher Being and ode to our comedic senses will remain one of Nashville Superspeedway’s most memorable moments.
The track returns to the NASCAR schedule in 2021, and though Nelms won’t perform the prerace prayer because track officials wanted to spread the opportunity to other clergy in the area, it’s difficult to envision anyone trying to duplicate what he did that day.
The pastor himself felt a mix of disappointment and relief about not delivering the invocation at the track that isn’t far from his home "office" at the Family Baptist Church in Lebanon, Tennessee.
"There’s a little bit of relief," Nelms said. "I thought, ‘What will I do now?' There’s no encore to that. I used up my best material."
Nelms didn’t have all that material written or memorized or planned years ago. He had an idea of what he would say, but he doesn’t believe in scripts when it comes to prayer.
What he believes was that he had seen too many prerace invocations that didn’t connect with the race teams or the race fans.
"It’s got to where you could see, they were trying to be respectful, they knew it was a prayer, the fans and the crew, but they weren’t listening. They weren’t participating. It wasn’t anything they were interested in," Nelms said.
"That was kind of my motivation."
He closed his eyes, as he always does when he prays, and delivered words fueled equally by the passion of racing and the passion of ministry.
"Apostle Paul said things like, ‘I become all things to all men,’" Nelms said. "If he would be there, he would want to speak the language, he would want to reach the people that he’s got the opportunity to, not try to go to religious rhetoric with a bunch of race car fans. It just doesn’t work."
Nelms certainly spoke the language. Drivers and crews smiled but tried not to laugh, and the crowd roared, especially at the "smokin’ hot wife" line made famous by Will Ferrell in "Talladega Nights" and the "boogity, boogity, boogity" line made famous by Darrell Waltrip.
"You’re kind of into the prayer, and you’re listening, and as it goes on, it kind of gets you going and gets you fired up," driver Austin Dillon said. "And then as it’s going, it almost became, this is next-level. He was getting after it in what he was saying."
Nelms had met drivers prior to the race, something that made him giddy, considering he figured the closest he would ever get to drivers would be watching from the cheap seats. They could feel his excitement. Dillon admits he fed off the energy of the prayer that day.
"The cool part about it was it kind of pumped me up before the race," Dillon said. "Some people use music, but that prayer was like, ‘Man, I want to go out there and race and put on a show for the fans and do it for the big man above.’
"It was cool. It got me fired up. It gave me goosebumps."
Not everyone felt the same way. Soon after the prayer, the phone rang at the church. Nelms’ wife answered the phone.
The pastor laughs as he tells this story about the woman who called the church – and his wife’s response.
"She wanted to gripe about how disrespectful I was to my wife," Nelms said. "[My wife] said, ‘Ma’am, I am the wife. I appreciate it, and I really enjoyed it.’ She loved it.
"She is a little more shy, a little more private than I am. But it sure did help my marriage. It didn’t hurt anything there."
What it didn’t help was the family vacation scheduled for the days following the Nashville race.
Instead of a vacation at the beach, Nelms spent hours inside doing interviews, trying to juggle the unexpected flurry of media requests. His only quiet time came when he went to the ocean, and his phone didn’t ring for a few hours. He then realized he had dropped his phone in the water.
Maybe that was divine intervention to remind him to spend time with his family. It certainly didn’t stop the little bit of fame he earned with that prerace prayer.
Since then, Nelms has delivered the invocation at the Richard Childress Racing holiday party, and he serves as the track chaplain at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway.
He brings the same energy that he brought to Nashville Superspeedway a decade ago. He wants to motivate people in their setting, whether that’s in the church, at an event or at the race track.
"It’s just been really cool to remember what all this opened up in my life and what all opportunities it brought, and I’m just humbled by the whole thing," Nelms said.
"I’m just an old, country boy from North Georgia that don’t deserve any of it, but I’m not giving any of it back."
Who would give up the cool moments, such as the one he had a few weeks ago, when he saw Darrell Waltrip at the gas station?
"I saw him at the gas station here in Lebanon, and that’s the first thing he said, ‘Oh, you are the boogity, boogity, boogity guy,’" Nelms said.
"And I said, 'No, you are.’"
They both are in the sense that they both used those words to fire people up, just in different ways. They both used those words and their personalities to etch themselves in racing lore.
"If there is not heart, a passion about it, what good is it?" Nelms said. "When we preach, we are passionate about our preaching. Whether there are 10 people or 100 people or 1,000 people, we want to be passionate.
"If it doesn’t mean anything to you, if you’re not excited about it, why should anybody else get excited?"
Joe Nelms: NASCAR’s favorite preacher
Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!
