It’s clear how Brian France feels about it, and he can point to some recent success in making Nascar less homogeneous at the corporate level. Nascar’s managing director of public affairs, Marcus Jadotte, is black, as is Max Siegel, a former Sony BMG executive who was named president of global operations for Dale Earnhardt Inc. in 2007. Indeed, France can say that the percentage of blacks in the Nascar executive suite—about 15 percent—is almost double the proportion of its black fan base.

But so far, the commitment to change at the executive level hasn’t translated into diversity behind the wheel. Beginning in 2004, Nascar formally confronted the issue by launching Drive for Diversity, a program designed to produce elite minority and female drivers by providing financial support from sponsors including Sunoco, Domino’s Pizza, and Eastman Kodak. Each fall for the past four years, prospective drivers have gathered in South Boston, Virginia, to race in front of Nascar recruiters at a scouting combine in the hope of securing a contract with an established team. Nascar officials even brought in Magic Johnson to serve on a committee to help create programs that would find and develop black, Hispanic, and female drivers and crew members.

To date, though, Drive for Diversity has produced little in the way of results. A few drivers have been selected to compete in low-level circuits and development series, but not a single program participant has yet competed full-time in a Nascar series. Supporting a driver full-time in the development series can cost more than $750,000. The $150,000 in sponsorship funds that Drive for Diversity offers participating teams comes nowhere near to covering that. People with knowledge of Drive for Diversity will say on the record that it’s a decent effort, albeit a work in progress. Off the record, most call it a sham—an underfunded shillfest that has killed more careers than it has made, angering whites while alienating the very minorities it’s meant to encourage. Tommy Gray, a Concord, North Carolina, teacher and mechanic who has worked on Drive for Diversity teams, says that in far too many cases, the program’s money was diverted to cover overhead and never reached the drivers. “There were several programs that never spent the money on the cars or on the team,” he says.

And as for Magic Johnson, years after his much-heralded appointment, he is largely a Nascar no-show. (Johnson didn’t respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment.)

Drive for Diversity touts Marc Davis among its successes, but Davis left the program after just one year, when his school schedule didn’t permit him to attend the 2006 scouting combine. (And Chase Austin, another rising young black driver, declined even to participate in the program.) In fact, Davis’ route to the brink of Nascar’s big leagues is largely the result of the diversity efforts of the Joe Gibbs Racing team and the Davis family’s commitment to do whatever is necessary to nurture his passion for racing. “When I call him my million-dollar baby, it’s not because that’s what he earns. It’s because that’s how much we’ve spent on his career,” says his father, who previously worked in Washington, D.C., as a network-news cameraman.

Davis drove his first racecar at age seven, moved to the Junior Dragsters program in the National Hot Rod Association, and competed for three years in the Bandolero series, a nationwide circuit that invites kids as young as eight to race in standardized souped-up go-carts. By the time he turned 13, Davis raced almost every weekend, traveling 15 hours each way from Maryland to Florida for a 25-lap competition. The efforts paid off with two national championships in the Legends series (contests using smaller replicas of 1930s-style street racers). “That was an amazing season, one of those seasons you might never have again,” Davis recalls.