For years, the beer that flows into the Martinsville Speedway has come from the coolers NASCAR fans are allowed to tote inside. Soon it will also flow from speedway concession stands.

Selling beer to race fans, which will begin this weekend for the Advance Auto Parts 500, is one of the changes implemented by the speedway's new owner, International Speedway Corp.

The change - which allows both carry-in and concession-sold beer - runs counter to a national trend aimed at cutting back on drinking at sporting events.

"This is really swimming against the pattern that's been established by professional sports and collegiate sports," said Jerry M. Lewis, a sociology professor at Kent State University who studies sports fan behavior.

Beer is sold at professional football, basketball and baseball games. But sales are usually cut off before the game ends. While some NASCAR tracks have followed suit, Martinsville is not one of them.

Jill Pepper, director of TEAM (Techniques for Effective Alcohol Management) Coalition, an Arlington-based group that works with teams, vendors and stadiums, said NASCAR is the only professional sport she knows of that allows fans to both carry beer into the arena and purchase it on-site.

Although fans will be able to buy 12-ounce cups of beer from concessions stands at Martinsville, the speedway is limiting the size of coolers it allows through the gates. Each fan will be limited to a 6-by-6-by-12-inch container that speedway spokesman Mike Smith called a "six-pack sized cooler."

At past races, coolers as large as 14-by-14- by-14 inches have been allowed inside.

Smaller coolers are part of an ISC policy implemented for security reasons after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Smith said. The goal was not to restrict the amount of alcohol, but rather make it easier for track officials to search for weapons.

"Everything is subject to search when you come through the gates, and obviously everything is going to bog down when people are coming in with the big coolers," Smith said.

Until fans adjust to the new rule, the policy could have the practical effect of reducing the amount of beer consumed at the speedway. But some still worry about offering two sources of beer at any sport - and NASCAR in particular.

David Buchanan, a public health professor at the University of Massachusetts, is one of the critics.

"People are at the race for four hours, they're consuming alcohol, they're watching cars go in excess of 100 mph, and then they get in their own cars," Buchanan said.

"It's just common sense that this is a very dangerous mix."

Buchanan is the author of a study that criticized beer companies for targeting a sport that naturally appeals to young, blue-collar males. That same demographic group is more likely to get drunk and drive, the study concluded.

And, Buchanan says, working-class men between the ages of 18 and 24 are most likely to be influenced by both the behavior of the NASCAR drivers they idolize and the sponsorships by beer companies that recognize the potential market at any speedway.

"It is just a beer can on wheels," Buchanan said of the typical beer-sponsored race car. "It fosters the illusion that 'this person is part of the beer industry and can drive his car at incredibly fast speeds, therefore I can do that, too.'"

Others say the study was based on flawed stereotypes.

"It's not a predominantly blue-collar sport anymore," Smith said. "That's where our sport has contended that his assumption was greatly skewed."

With other sports, disturbances involving fans and alcohol have led to changes in policies. Most recently, the National Basketball Association began to limit beer sales in the wake of a brawl between players and fans at a game between the Detroit Pistons and the Indiana Pacers.

Some speedways have done the same thing, shutting down the beer stands as the race winds down.

But ISC, which added Martinsville Speedway last year to its group of 12 NASCAR tracks, has not followed that example.

"There aren't any incidents that I can recall," ISC spokesman David Talley said. "Obviously when you get 100,000 people together in close proximity to each other, there may be an altercation or two. But I don't know of anything out of the ordinary to be concerned about."

Lewis, the Kent State professor who studies fan behavior, agreed that NASCAR generally has not seen major disturbances. One reason might be that fan loyalty is spread among a field of drivers instead of divided between two teams, he said.

Henry County Sheriff Frank Cassell said there have been no major problems at the Martinsville Speedway, despite the typical crowd of about 70,000 fans.

"I'll be honest with you," Cassell said. "It amazes me."

It's not that the speedway doesn't have drunken fans. It's just physically impossible to arrest them all and transport them to the magistrate's office for booking, Cassell said. With about 130 officers working full time on traffic and crowd control, only the most obvious - and potentially dangerous - drunk is likely to get arrested.

"We could probably arrest 1,000 drunk-in-publics and be perfectly within our legal rights," Cassell said.

But, the sheriff added, "if some people have had a little too much to drink but they're not causing a problem, sometimes you just let them go on their merry way. Because we have more serious things to worry about. That may not be the most politically correct answer, but I'm a practical person."

Last year, authorities made four drunk-in-public arrests during the three-day race weekend in April. At the second race in October, there were six arrests on charges of public intoxication, disorderly conduct and assault.

At Virginia Tech football games, where alcohol is forbidden but often smuggled into the stadium, authorities follow a similar policy. "We have a lot going on on game day, and our main focus is on the safety of the masses," said Officer Geof Allen of the Tech Police Department.

Tech police averaged 11 alcohol-related arrests at Tech's seven home games last year. But police do not count the larger number of people who are ordered to leave the stadium for alcohol-related offenses, such as trying to get through the gates with a bottle of booze slipped under their belt.

In Roanoke, selling beer at sporting events has generated some community opposition that so far has not surfaced in Martinsville.

Eddie Honeycutt of the Henry County Baptist Association, which recently fought plans for an off-track betting parlor in the community, said he has concerns about beer sales at the race. But he had not heard about the change until told by a reporter.

There has been no public announcement of Martinsville Speedway's plan to sell beer. The speedway already had an ABC license that allowed it to both sell beer and permit fans to carry it in, according to Whitney Miller of the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Smith declined to say why the speedway has not sold beer in the past. "It is a policy that ISC has at all of its venues," he said. "It was obviously a business decision made at that level."

It comes as no surprise to Lewis that the speedway's new owner has decided to start selling draft beers for $3 each at the same time it is restricting the size of coolers filled with cheaper beer.

"In my view, it has nothing to do with moral choices in terms of drinking and driving," Lewis said. "It has to do with profits."

The new rules on coolers may not sit well with some NASCAR fans.

"Holy cow," Pat Chapman of Roanoke said when told of the new policy.

"I don't mind them selling beer. That's pretty cool. It's about time, I guess," said Chapman, who often attends the Martinsville race. "But making the coolers smaller is a big mistake."

That, he said, could lead to a lot of upset fans come race day.

Staff writer Alexander Pegg

contributed to this report.