PRESIDENT BUSH travelled to Florida yesterday in search of a large group of voters blithely unaware of their own importance.

He found 250,000 of them revelling in a sensory assault of ear-splitting engines, heavy petrol fumes mixed with frying meat and burnt rubber, and the Stars and Stripes flapping from every conceivable corner.

This is where Nascar Dad comes to worship. And Nascar Dad may not know it, but he is viewed as the key to the presidential election. Republicans and Democrats have both identified him as the swing voter who will decide this year’s race for the White House.

He is white, blue collar and very patriotic, but disaffected with politics and distrustful of authority. He may well have served in the military; he leans to the Right but Republicans cannot take his vote for granted; and both parties are battling to get to him first.

Nascar Dad has inherited his mantle from the Soccer Moms whose suburban concerns scripted electoral strategy in the 1990s. He has appeared in previous incarnations as “Joe Sixpack” and the “Angry White Man”.

He also has much in common with the “guys with Confederate flags in the back of their pick-ups” whom Howard Dean, when he was still the Democratic front-runner, hamfistedly described as the type of voter his party had to win over.

Nascar Dad takes his name from the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing which claims 75 million fans, making it the country’s second most popular sport behind American football, and yesterday was his big day.

The Daytona 500 is a screaming 500-mile, 200-lap race, Nascar’s equivalent of the Super Bowl and the baseball World Series rolled into one, and that is what drew Mr Bush for the first of what will be many election year visits to the pivotal Sunshine State. But while Nascar Dad may be all the rage among pollsters, strategists and pundits, the creature himself is oblivious to all the fuss. “Nascar Dad? Is that a drink?” asked one Nascar Grandad preparing to cross International Speedway Boulevard towards the grandstand.

Jeff Moore, 38, a former US Army mechanic who has driven with his two sons from Tennessee, is counting the hours to race time by watching speeding Dodge pick-ups screeching and skidding around tight corners on a display track. He is a Nascar Dad to the core, even though he has never heard the term. But Democrats should not waste their time pursuing him. “I love the President,” he says, in particular for the attention he has given to the military.

Brian Dunn, 48, an environmental worker has brought his wife and two daughters from Long Island. His torso is covered with a team shirt, and his forearms with large tattoos. Mr Bush does not have to worry about retaining his vote either. “We are from New York,” he said. “We know a lot of people who died in 9/11. I give him credit for what he did right after. He looks after the military and the veterans.”

Nascar Dads wear their driver’s number on their sleeves. And on their hats, chests, shoulders and backs. Many have at least one, possibly two, mini US flags stuck into the back of their baseball caps.

Nascar — which originated from the high-speed flight of bootleg moonshiners from the law — is “major America”, according to George O’Neil, who took up his grandstand seats more than three hours before race time.

But Mr O’Neil also illustrates that Nascar Dads are not a one-size-fits-all grouping. The 45-year-old doctor flew his wife and two children from Illinois in his own jet. “I’m educated,” he says with emphasis as he pledges his vote to Mr Bush. “If the other ass had won last time we would probably be paying homage to Osama bin Laden now. And we hate the French.”

Nascar Dad, dreamt up by the Democrat strategist Celinda Lake, is proving a hard sell for Democrats. Bill Clinton was booed by the crowd and shunned by drivers when he turned up to a Nascar race during the 1992 campaign.

For Mr Bush, who delivered yesterday’s preparatory orders to drivers, anything but a warm reception would have been a bad omen. He stroked his audience, describing Nascar as “more than an event, this is a way of life”.

He showed little hangover from the controversy of his National Guard service: “I flew fighters in the Guard and I like speed.”

Before delivering the most famous words in US racing, “Gentlemen, start your engines”, Mr Bush received a cheering reception from a crowd that had risen, removed their hats and bowed their heads in prayer as one.

But support for him was not absolute. A 76-year-old great-grandfather and Republican who had driven 950 miles from Indiana with three other generations of his family to attend his 21st Daytona 500, said of Mr Bush: “I’m not so sure I want him to be President for another four years. I’m not sure I want some liberal from Massachusetts who’s going to give the world away to be President either. ”

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• 'Lost' cargo ship Arctic Sea gives up its secrets
• Army wants to retreat in Afghanistan
• Jungle angel was Obama’s mother