NASCAR

I can finally say I’ve done it, I’ve attended a NASCAR event and lived to tell the tale… And to be honest, I actually quite enjoyed myself.

As I said before, I went with Frank as well as Jill and Ryan, so that was pretty cool. As the All-Star event was due to start at 7:30, we left here at around 4/4:30 and made our way over to the track via back roads which means we saw no traffic at all. Once there we bagged a sweet parking spot and went in to the Team Lowe’s Zone, which was a big hospitality tent for people with appropriate passes, in there we milled around and bagged some complementary goods, food and drinks before going to our seat and waited for the Nextel Open, which served as the last qualifier for the All-Star event, but not before “security” pointed out our cooler was low on beer, seriously!

The NASCAR All-Star race isn’t like a regular 500 mile race, firstly it’s nowhere near as long, it’s actually about 120 miles (80 laps of the Lowe’s Motor Speedway oval) and it’s broken up into 4 20 lap segments. It’s actually pretty confusing about what’s really going on for most of it, except the last segment is a flat out “dash for the cash” as the winner walks away with one million dollars. Thats where the real action is…

We were sat in the grandstand on turn two, that’s where all the wrecks happened, seriously. In the Nextel Open, first race, on the first lap there was a big wreck that took out Juan Pablo Montoya and Paul Menard. Another few wrecks happened shortly thereafter, slowly whittling down the field. In the end, Matin Truex Jr and Johnny Sauter passed Carl Edwards with three laps to go to book their place in the All-Star challenge.

Following that was the driver introductions for the field and the fans were definitely vocal about who they like and dislike. Michael Jordan served as the grand marshal (which basically amounted to saying “gentlemen, start your engines”) and we were soon underway… If you’ve ever watched a NASCAR race on TV, let me tell you it really doesn’t do it justice, the sound of 21 750+ horsepower cars screaming round a bend is really an awesome sound, even with noise canceling headphones on, I could still hear them and we were pretty far back, I’d hate to have been down near the front. The smell is also something you don’t appreciate until you’re there, smoke, burning rubber and rich gasoline fills the air.

The race it’s self was pretty uneventful till the last 20 lap segment, though it had slight moments with Jimmie Johnson having tire issues (which we heard over the pit crew radio scanner) and Dale Earnhardt, Jr getting a pit road speed limit penalty. But the last segment kicked off with a big wreck right in front of us as the two Busch brothers came together and took each other out. A few laps later Jeff Gordon got a flat rear tire leaving Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson to fight it out for the last few laps, Harvick managed to hold Jimmie off for the win and the million dollars.

What followed was chaos as close to 100,000 people tried to leave the area as soon as possible. It took us 45 minutes to move 3 foot in our car park. We finally got home around 1am, I crashed shortly there after.

As I said, overall it was an enjoyable experience, good for people watching as you see some, well let’s say, characters. I doubt I’d go to a 500 mile event, I’ll stick with this shorter race.

NASCAR All-Star Challenge – May 19th 2007 (Set)

Originally uploaded by FLC.