By Brian Hilderbrand

Sat, Apr 5, 2008 (2 a.m.)

From the time he strapped himself into a NASCAR-style stock car at the Richard Petty Driving Experience and took a few laps around the Las Vegas Motor Speedway oval, Sun editorial cartoonist Mike Smith knew he was born to race.

Unable to find anybody who would take him seriously and put him in a real race car, Smith decided to combine his passion for NASCAR with his talent for drawing and developed the StockcarToon. Since 1998, Smith has scoured the tracks and garages of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and poked fun at drivers, team owners, fans and NASCAR officials in his weekly cartoon in the Sun.

Smith’s keen observations and sometimes biting wit have made the nationally syndicated StockcarToon a must-read — in this newspaper and online — not only for NASCAR fans, but also for those who work in the sport.

If you’ve missed any of Smith’s stock car skewerings over the past year, you’ll want to check out “Nuts for Racing: A StockcarToons Book” — the third collection of Smith’s work. Published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, the 96-page, full-color book is in bookstores now and is available online at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. At $9.99, it’s the perfect gift for the die-hard NASCAR fan in your life.

When he’s not tending to the serious business of creating his weekly StockcarToon, or blogging about the sport on the Sun’s Web site, Smith is an award-winning editorial cartoonist for the Sun whose cartoons also appear every Thursday in USA Today and in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek.