TOBACCO ROADS; Race drivers smoking? Not so much today. But the habit once was far more common than we knew.(NEWS)

Byline: GARY WATKINS

The thought of modern-day, ultrafit racers kicking back and filling their lungs with smoke between sessions is laughable. After all, it is common for teams to demand that their drivers strive for Olympian fitness levels to cope with the physical and mental demands of hustling multimillion-dollar projectiles around circuits at triple-digit speedsand triple-digit heart rates. But once upon a time not long ago, many saw no problem with inhaling nicotine when they were not sucking down exhaust fumes. Some just went farther than others.

WINSTON OR MARLBORO?

You would expect a NASCAR Winston Cup driver to smoke Winstonsespecially if he lit up during a race in the era before Sprint took over naming rights. If you dust off some old onboard video from the early 1990s, that's exactly how things appear. You can probably just make out a Winston logo on the side of the pack as Dick Trickle reaches for a cigarette during a caution period.

But the stock-car veteran, who was the 1989 rookie of the year at age 48, did not smoke the sponsor's products. Instead, Trickle loaded up a Winston pack with Marlboros. A NASCAR myth suggests that a camera once caught Trickle taking a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros and that the sanctioning body decreed that he must at least appear to endorse Winston. That's not entirely true, he insists.

"I always smoked Marlboros, but I did try whatever new brands Winston came up with, Trickle says. "I never liked them, so out of respect to Winston, I always put my Marlboros in one of their packs. They didn't force me to do it.

The idea that there was a public debate over the brand of cigarette a driver smoked seems ludicrous in our politically correct times. Yet even as late as the mid-1990s, no one seemed to question a driver's right to light up at an opportune moment.