Off to the Races

I've been a NASCAR fan for about 20 years or so. Part of it stems from the fact that my grandpa, uncle, and dad were race car drivers back in their day. While they each raced various types of cars, they were mostly sprint car drivers (open wheel cars). I can remember being at the racetrack watching my dad race and then sleeping in the back of the truck afterwards. After a while, it got too expensive so we sold the race car, boo! Anyway, I think I got into NASCAR at about age 10 or so and back then was a Dale Earnhardt fan. I probably supported him because others around me did and I was "new" into the sport. I waxed and waned and eventually Rusty Wallace became my driver of choice. For my 16th birthday, my parents surprised me with a secret trip to Phoenix to watch the race. It was the best gift! I was so excited!
While in the military, I went to several races at the premier racetrack--Talladega. In fact, we saw the last race Dale Earnhardt won before he died. The track is amazingly fast and it's a great time. I also went to a race at the Kansas Speedway, and had been talking to Paul about going to a race out here but we never came through on it.
A few weeks ago, I checked the schedule to see where they were going to be. I honestly haven't been following it as closely as I used to. When I saw they were heading to Pocono June 7th, I asked Paul if he was interested in going. He said he was so we decided to look into tickets. Tickets were available, but we were concerned about the weather. It's a tough time of year in the northeast with unpredictable weather. We continued to look at forecasts and didn't wind up buying tickets until late Saturday night!
Sunday morning I went for my run and after we hit the road. It didn't take us long to get down there, maybe a little over an hour & a half or so. We hit traffic going into the track, but we'd left plenty of time for that just in case. We walked in the gates and saw they were confiscating the spray can type sunscreen bottles. We'd left that kind home fortunately. But we heard people complaining and moaning. Oh bother! We headed for the merchandise trailers because I wanted to buy a hat for the race. My driver of choice these days is "Smoke" otherwise known as Tony Stewart. We stopped at his trailer first, but I wasn't that thrilled with the hat choices. We stopped by Dale Jr's trailer, Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne, and still nothing. We saw another Smoke trailer, so we went there and they had several I liked. But how to choose! I finally picked a cool gray hat with a skull on it. It says Smoke across the front. Simple but awesome. Nice!
From there we grabbed a pretzel and a beer and made our way to our seats. I couldn't believe how low we were. This was both good and bad. For these races you like to be high. Pocono is a big track (2.5 miles). You want to be high enough so you can see across the racetrack to the other side. The problem is when you purchase tickets online, you can't always know how high up you are in relation to everything. It didn't help that Pocono's website wasn't the best either.
Anyway, we were only 10 rows from the fence. That means we were WAY low! There was a grandstand on the infield directly across from us so with that in the way AND being that low, there was no chance of seeing across. Interesting enough, I didn't get too bent out of shape about it. : )
We listened to God Bless America and the Star Spangled Banner and were thrilled to see a C-5 Galaxy fly over! Yay! "What's that sound, cadets?" "The sound of freedom, sir!" : ) Cool cool!
Drivers were introduced and rode past the grandstands in Humvees. We were so close that when a lady in front of us yelled,"Kasey!" at Kasey Kahne, he turned around and waved!
Since qualifying was rained out on Friday, they went by the current point standings to determine starting order. That meant Smoke was on the pole, awesome! They lined up and were warming up when my dad sent me a text saying Smoke was in a back up car. That meant he was starting dead last! Noooo! I later learned that he'd crashed his primary car in practice on Saturday. When that happens and you have to go to a back up car, you have to also start in the back. Bummer!
So, it was a Jeff Gordon & Jimmie Johnson show up front at the start of the race. Jimmie led for quite a while it seemed. There was a caution early when Denny Hamlin had some sort of problem. I watched as Smoke started to make his way through the field.
We were directly across from the entrance to pit road and specifically Jimmie Johnson's pit. We had great views of everyone entering pit road and could see Jimmie's pit stops fairly well. Hard to believe they can do all they do in 13 seconds!
The race fell into Carl Edwards' lap and he dominated for a long time. There weren't any major crashes all day. A few guys smacked the wall and each other. Michael Waltrip had problems getting into the pits. He lost it on the way in and he lost it in the pits. Not sure what his major malfunction was on the day. That's unusual.
It was getting down to the wire and Smoke made his way into the top 10. A caution came out for light rain and they pitted. Smoke got out of the pits first, yes! The problem was that most likely they would still have to pit one more time. As the laps counted down, guys started coming in. Two guys still hadn't come in: Jimmie Johnson & Smoke. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I couldn't imagine they had enough fuel to make it. Each time Smoke drove by I was dumbfounded that he hadn't pitted. I watched him pass a lapped car and several laps later I saw the lapped car pass him back. To me that meant he was easing the gas--not flat footing it. As it turns out, that was exactly what he was doing. It definitely paid off as the checkers flew for him! Yayyyyyy! How exciting for my driver to win!! Jimmie Johnson had been around 3rd place, but he did wind up running out of fuel and finished 7th instead.
Smoke took a victory lap, did some awesome burnouts, and we made a mad dash for the parking lot. It didn't take us too long to get out and were back on the open road heading for home. We stopped for a meal and made it home where we called my mom and dad to get all the details. Because it's so loud, we wore earplugs so you can't hear the announcers or really know what's going on. I can usually piece things together, but some things you just can't figure out. Lots of people rent scanners to listen to in car happenings and we talked about doing that, but we didn't want to spend the money nor have to return the unit after the race and risk getting caught up in traffic. Maybe next time, who knows.
I'm posting photos and videos that we took. It was a good time and it was fun to be back at a racetrack. : )

For photos & videos, click here