Explain NASCAR to me please

[TL1000R]

Good evening all. As a massive Motorsport fan for many years, both 2 & 4 wheel I was rather embarrassed when asked by a friend the other day to tell him more about NASCAR. Now I can bore people to tears for many an hour about F1 or bike racing but struggled to pull up any knowledge on NASCAR other than they go round in circles.
Now I know there are different manufacturers but are these just a change of body style or really factory cars? Are the engines all standard or does each team develop an tune their own? Is chassis tech fairly similar or not?

My image of it is cars build by small teams in workshops in the good ol south all pretty much the same and then they stick on the badge of what ever car company is paying the bills that year. How wrong am I?

[TL1000R]

Wow, thanks Crafty. So to summarise cars are very similar technically so almost like a one make series I guess it's mainly about setup an the driver? With the championship 'the chase' sounds like the setup run in British superbikes the last couple of years. You race most of the year just for the while thing to start again with a few races to go for the top guys?

You said you'd concentrate on one series, I take the others run along a similar pattern but are slower/less advanced like the lower open wheel formulas we are used to seeing below F1?

The main thing that baffles me is the apparent lack of technology in this form of Motorsport. They almost seem very much against moving forward.

[TL1000R]

Once again PH comes up trumps. Thanks for all the info chaps, a million times better than anything google could offer me. Think it's about time I stopped dismissing NASCAR as something for hicks and suchlike and gave it a watch.