Bristol

Finally, I'm posting about last weekend. Okay, for all the non-race fans that read here let me just talk a little about Bristol and why the August race especially is such a big deal. Tickets to this race are the hardest to get all year. It's a night race under lights which is unusual. It's a short track, only a half-mile (Daytona is 2.5 miles for comparison), which means that there are lots of wrecks and hot tempers. It's in the area of the country where stock car racing began. Finally, tickets in NASCAR are not just put up on Ticketmaster every year. If you bought a ticket to a race at Bristol, for example, the previous year, the track will contact you for the next year and ask if you want the tickets again. If you do, you buy them. If not, the track will sell them. Well, at Bristol, everyone buys their tickets back. So, you basically have to know someone who has tickets but isn't using them to be able to go. One final thing, even though it's a small track/infield, this place is huge. It's the only track that is in a bowl...completely surrounded by seats! It's VERY LOUD!

Okay, now about my experience...try combining Bonnaroo, Mardi Gras, and the Wilson County Fair with 160,000 people and put it in a tiny mountain town in East Tennessee. There you go! It was quite the spectacle, and I had so much fun. We saw two great races, and we also stayed very entertained just people-watching. I got to see Paula Deen! She was the grand marshall of the Friday night race. "Hey Drivers! Y'all start those engines!" So cute! Here's a video of her (you can't see her but you can hear her!


Here are some pictures. They don't even come close to capturing what it was like, but they give you an idea!

This was just looking in one direction from the outside of the track. It was like this all the way around the track. Campers, merchandise trailers, sponsor booths, food vendors, etc.


A bunch of tires.


A giant shopping cart.


The warm-up to the Nationwide race on Friday. The Nationwide series runs on Friday nights or Saturdays usually. It's one step down from the Sprint Cup series which is the big Sunday race (but they ran on Saturday night in this case).


"The World's Fastest Half-Mile"


Dad, my racing buddy. We had such a great time on this trip, and I'm glad I got to experience it with him!


The pit crews during the opening prayer and national anthem.


The start of the Sharpie 500 on Saturday night.

Finally, here are a couple more videos. The first one is a pit stop during the Sprint Cup race on Saturday night. The second is after a wreck that was so bad they had to red flag the race, which means the drivers had to come to a stop, they couldn't even pit until they got the track cleaned up. There was gas and oil everywhere.