DRIVER'S SEAT: Editor Mast gives the race fan demographic its own lifestyle magazine. Courtesy Lucas Mast

lucas mast was on a customary post-Stanford path. He picked up a law degree from the University of San Diego and then headed for Washington, D.C., where he worked as an analyst at the libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute. Then old friend Peter Thiel, ’89, JD ’92, took Mast out to lunch. Thiel had a pile of money from selling his company, PayPal, to eBay for $1.5 billion. If Mast were to start a business, Thiel wondered, what would it be?

Mast thought back to his college days, when he and Thiel co-founded the Stanford Review. He thought of his new passion, NASCAR—the storming engines, the American flags snapping in the wind, all those companies hawking their goods. Pure bliss to a free-market kind of guy. What about a NASCAR magazine, Mast wondered.

American Thunder was born. The San Francisco-based glossy aims at the sport’s 25 million fans, covering everything from music and hunting to travel and barbecue. In addition to the expected speedway fare—a cover story on Jeff Gordon, an article on the revitalization of the Indy 500, a history of the Winston Cup girls—there might be a piece on the drivers’ favorite country music performers or some grilling recipes from racing’s big names.

For Mast—who fell in love with the sport when some friends from Capitol Hill took him to a race in Watkins Glen, N.Y.—it’s the chance of a lifetime. Thiel was skeptical at first, then grew more enthusiastic when Mast pointed out that automotive companies aren’t the only ones interested in NASCAR. Every industry from pharmaceuticals (think Viagra) to consumer electronics wants a piece of the raceway.

One factor that convinced the pair that the magazine could work was how quickly they gained Wal-Mart’s blessing. They’d been told it would probably take eight months to get a meeting with the retail giant just to discuss putting the magazine on the store’s shelves. But only two weeks after Mast made the initial phone call, Wal-Mart execs promised to carry American Thunder in 1,800 stores. By its third issue, put to bed in May, American Thunder boasted 165,000 subscribers and had sold 204,000 newsstand copies. “Lucas clearly discovered a huge untapped portion of the NASCAR market,” Thiel says, “and the results so far have been very exciting.”