DRIVERS. START YOUR ENGINES!

First visit back to Daytona since 2020! My sister and brother-in-law love getting back to the Great American Race. What a week. Rained out on the Sunday, but we always anticipate a Monday race. We were not disappointed.





Yes, that is the King



Visited the North Turn restaurant. They have a mini-museum dedicated to the races on the beach.


Never ideal that races rained out. The Monday turnout was incredible.

 

My wife grew up in Concord, NC, close enough to the track that you could hear the cars on race day, but had never been to a race because it was a “boys” thing.
When we moved to Orlando I bought tickets to the 500 and took her. Many laps in there was a caution and I led her down to the front stretch. Back then you could walk immediately adjacent to the fence. We got down there the second lap after going green and walked towards turn 4. Here came this pack of cars off of 4, up to speed, coming at us, 2 and 3 wide.
In a second or two the entire pack goes by us and we’re blasted with dirt, rubber, chicken bones, hot dog wrappers and it blows her hat off. She chases it down and comes back to me shouting, “this is awesome!”. She’s gone to every race I’ve gone to since.
Daytona had some awesome car shows back then. The Speedway Spectacular was in the spring and if you had a car in the show you got to take a low speed lap on the track. We had a custom 69 Vette we showed and did the lap. Banking was incredible, although we weren’t allowed up the track in the turns where the banking is most severe. The other show was the Turkey Rod Run which was over Thanksgiving and was a huge show with thousands of cars. Both shows were in the infield so you got to go through the tunnel to get inside the track.
Here’s a pic of us going through Victory Lane with lawn chairs strapped to the luggage rack..

 

I have always been a motorhead. I love hearing stories like yours. I live in the PNW and getting to a live race means a travel commitment. I keep hoping that NASCAR will find a spot on the calendar for us. I'm going to the Xfinity race in Portland 6/1/24. This will be the third year for Xfinity at PIR. Just a great venue and can't wait!

 

When you say PIR, I think of Phoenix
Here’s a video taken and narrated by my wife when I was driving at PIR. A friend, Joe, talked a bunch of smack on the way to the track and was pretty quiet on the way back…I lapped him twice in 15 laps even with being on the rev limiter on the straights.
Myself and sons have driven Infiniti cars on track at Vegas, Phoenix, Daytona, Charlotte, exotics at Carolina Motorsports Park in SC and the BMW Experience in Spartanburg, although that’s in road cars. We started with a driving school at Bondurant before Bob passed and it was sold. They taught you that you aren’t that great of a driver after all. Yea, we’re motorheads, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo7UNLPeqcM

 

That is so cool. My brother attended Bondurant back in the day. He loved it. I grew up in VA and was able to drive to Martinsville, Richmond and Bristol to see races. Vegas is now my closest race for travel and trying to shedule the October race.

 

This is the last driving experience at Charlotte with my boys. About 1 1/2 years ago. You had a “spotter” that communicated via radio. They were cup cars with crate engines, 400 hp or so.
It was cramped, loud, dirty, smelly and awesome! My days of climbing in and out of racecar windows are done, though. We did 16 minutes in two eight minute segments and it whooped my a$$, plus my car pushed and was a handful in turns. Managed to log a few laps a tad over 148 mph but my oldest son clipped me at 150 mph and it doesn’t look like I’ll ever hear the end of that..
Been to a lot of tracks, probably Darlington the most since it’s close, but never a Bristol race, which I’d love to go.