Coke 600

The other day I told you my good fortune of getting race tickets.  Today I'll share some photos from our trip.

First of all, Cari and I have been to a handful of Nascar events at various tracks.  Charlotte, by far, has the best traffic management we have ever seen.  We arrived a few hours ahead of the start time and had no problem finding free parking.   When we left with the 100,000 other fans we had about a five minute wait getting out of the parking lot and then it was smooth sailing the whole way home.  It was incredible considering the amount of people that were out there.

The SPEED broadcast booth just outside of the track.

 When the Budwiser horse cart showed up they were instantly popular.  For the beer or for the horses, I'm not sure.

Look at us!  Mini-Jeff Gordon twins!

Another reason mini-Jeff Gordon was funny is because we didn't know they had a regular size figure at the other side of the booth.  As I was going through the pictures we took I saw the guy on the right of this next shot.  

You can't have a NASCAR race until the Airforce does a flyover.  As this plane approached you couldn't even hear it.  As it passed directly overhead the sound shook the bleachers.

Let's go racing boys (and Danica)!

 Our seats were up above turn 2.  We were high enough that we were able to see around the entire track.  We were also high enough that the sun was beating down on us while the front stretch was shadowed in shade.  It was incredibly hot out there on Sunday afternoon and we kept checking how much lower the sun had moved.  It seemed to be standing still.

There were no wrecks in the race but we saw some great racing and were able to keep track of things with the scanner programmed into the driver communications as well as the radio broadcast.  It's totally different being at the track vs watching at home.  You have to remember that there are 43 cars starting one of these races and the TV cameras are only focused on a small handful of them.  There is always something happening on track.

It's hard to describe the sound, sights, and smell of the cars roaring past.  It's something you would have to see in person to really understand.  Here's a short video from my cell phone to give you an idea of what it was like.

We had an amazing time at the race.  It has been a few years since we have been to one and this experience reminded us how much fun it is. Does anyone have any tickets to Dover that they don't need this Sunday?