Counting down the 10 best NASCAR movies

	Will Ferrell's new movie, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, will join an all-too short list of NASCAR movies. Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR
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Most NASCAR fans will love Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, the feature film starring Will Ferrell debuting this weekend. Unless, of course, those fans don't laugh at Saturday Night Live or didn't like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, another Ferrell vehicle. But for the rest, Ricky Bobby should be a good laugh, even if it is more about slapstick and parody than plot and racing reality.

Yet Talladega Nights will immediately jump into every fan's list of top NASCAR movies. This inclusion in all-time lists is almost mandatory, primarily because of the few quality movies that have been made about stock-car racing. One of the problems is that movies like the classic Smokey and the Bandit do a better job of capturing the thrill of the race-chase and NASCAR's southern culture than do films based strictly on racing competition.

Most of the best racing movies aren't about NASCAR, but Indy or Formula One racing. The only racing movie to make Sports Illustrated's list of top 50 sports films was Grand Prix, which stars James Garner and Eva Marie Saint. Director John Frankenheimer does a fantastic job of letting the viewer know what it is like to sit behind the wheel of a race car. And Garner is simply bigger than life.

Le Mans is another racing classic, capturing the magic of the 24-hour race with the best racing sequences to appear in a movie. Steve McQueen is superb as he battles a German rival while at the same time exorcising the guilt he feels over causing an accident that killed his best friend. Winning, the Paul Newman movie, is more about relationships than Indy-style racing, but it does have some strong racing footage. The acting, with Joanne Woodward, Richard Thomas and Robert Wagner in the other major roles, is top notch. Heart Like a Wheel is the journey Shirley Muldowney took to become an NHRA champion, with both a strong story line and excellent drag racing footage.

But what movies are worth watching for the NASCAR fan? Here's one fan's list of the top 10 stock-car racing movies of all-time. NASCAR 3-D: The IMAX Experience is not included because it is a documentary. It is a great documentary, however, that ranks among the top 10 highest-grossing IMAX movies of all-time and deserves much praise. Also not included is ESPN's 3, which didn't belong on the list because it was a "made-for-TV" movie. It could have easily ranked fourth or fifth on this list.

10. Redline 7000 (1965): This story of stock car drivers and the women in their lives is by no means a great movie. James Caan is the star, but the movie has more songs than it does plot. The racing footage -- from Daytona, Darlington, Charlotte and Riverside -- saves the movie. Speed Lovers, a '68 movie starring top NASCAR driver Fred Lorenzen as himself, also has great footage of actual NASCAR races from the mid-'60s.