The past several years post-Rockbridge, Kelly stays a few extra days at her parent's house in order to allow me to recover from the exhaustion of two weeks of non-stop work. It is one of the many great gifts my wife gives to me. Usually I sleep for thirty of thirty-six hours, watch some movies, and generally crash.
This year, however, there was an intriguing voicemail waiting for me when I got home. Lee Hilts, an old friend of mine, had won tickets at work for the NASCAR race and he was inviting me to go down with him to Charlotte. With my wife's gracious blessing from afar, I called Lee up and we game-planned my first ever NASCAR experience.
This was a bit of an unusual race to start with. The All-Star Challenge is basically an exhibition race. They invite the all-stars of NASCAR to come and race and lure them with a $1 million payday for the winner. The set-up is that the race is only 80 laps and it re-starts every 20 laps. This is cool because when the cars are bunched up together, it makes it much more likely that they'll bump into each other...which is why people go to the races to begin with.
The main race was enjoyable, but the highlights were tw0-fold:
1. They staged an opening race before hand as a sort of "play-in" game--the top two winners advanced to the All-Star Challenge for a shot at $1 million. These drivers were clearly less skilled and there were five or six wrecks right in front of us. No one got hurt, and it looked pretty cool. Double bonus.
2. NASCAR culture. There were two sizeable boo's during the course of the evening. The first was for Jeff Gordon, the pretty-boy who wins lots of races and who therefore gets very little love from rednecks across the land.
The second set of boo's came from our section. In between the pre-race and the main race (which started at 9 p.m.) there were lots of people taking pictures of this guy several rows ahead of us. Being NASCAR neophytes, Lee and I wondered if this was some sort of celebrity sighting. Alas, no. It was a drunk guy who had passed out sitting up. Women were posing for pictures sitting on his lap. No movement. The boo's came when security came to check on the dude, to make sure he was okay.
Okay, so I might not know much about NASCAR culture but booing the guy coming to make sure that someone is still alive should not be kosher in any culture.
Thanks to my bro for posting while I was away, lots of stuff to post on post-Rockbridge, we'll get back in the flow of things this week...after the ringing in my ears settles down.
4 comments:
You should join the facebook group "Christian NASCAR Fans"! I think you might find some folks in the Jr. nation. (haha)
NASCAR is like a whole other culture . . .
Excellent post, my friend. However, I must disagree on one point - most NASCAR fans do not go to the races for the crashes (as awesome as they are). Wrecks tend to slow things down and waste time as the cars circle at 65 MPH, which is way less fun to watch than 180 MPH. For me, the role that wrecks play is not that I hope that they happen, but rather I know that at any minute they could happen, and any sort of crash at those speeds could be seriously hazardous to your health. That's the thrill - to see guys going that fast, that close together, right on the edge of sanity, yet mostly staying out of each other's way and not wrecking. Later this season, when they return to Talladega, watch that race. 43 cars going 200 MPH and there is 3 seconds difference between 1 and 43. It's insane and the best race to watch on TV of them all. So glad you went - one question is unanswered - who is your driver now? :)
Thanks for the helpful corrections, Marsh. I did think that the fact that laps under caution "counted" as part of the race was kind of dumb. Especially in a race as short as that one was. Do I understand correctly that it used to be that races could finish under caution but now the rule is that they cannot?
As for my driver, I wanted to pull for Dale Earnhardt Jr. because the whole crowd loved him, but honestly he sucked. So I have to confess that I had to go to the other extreme--I pulled for Jeff Gordon just because he got so little love from the crowd.
Hope you'll still call me your friend.
I cannot believe you wrote that. Man, that was cold - not only did you diss Junior but you pulled for Gordon. Yikes. There is a reason he gets little love! We can still be friends but please reconsider pulling for Gordon - there are way better choices out there!
As for cautions, if the caution comes out with 2 laps to go, they have a "Green-white-checkered" finish (3 laps) which is essentially overtime by a lap or two and has fuel-mileage implications. If the caution comes out during THAT, the race ends under caution. Before that, when the caution came out the drivers kept racing all the way back the start-finish line before slowing.
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