I am not a race fan. The closest I have come to being one is remembering younger years watching the Indy 500 on TV and still recall the terrible Swede Savage accident that I have only seen once in my life but through the magic of today’s technology I can enter it in Google and relive the accident again. In 2008, long after not seeing the race on television for a good number of years, I was able to experience the race in person for the first time and was simply amazed by every aspect of it.
For NASCAR I obviously knew it existed, and even recognize some of the bigger names that have built its history, but I have never come to the point where I saw a race on TV, never mind in person. So, this year, when there was an opportunity to tag along with a customer from France who was very interested in seeing the race, the answer was simple — count me in.
We stayed in the Orlando area and got to the track in just enough time to park and make it to our seats for the 1:00 PM start time and when the race was over we did pretty much the same to head out of town as soon as possible. So, besides seeing the starts of post race tailgating all over the area (as far out at the Home Depot parking lot where our car was) we did not have a chance to experience anything outside of the actual race itself.
US Air Force Thunderbirds
At the opening ceremony Martina McBride did an outstanding job singing the national anthem. For those looking for their first ‘car wreck’ with the words being sung they were sorely disappointed on this one. The fly over at the end by the US Air Force Thunderbirds, however brief, makes me want to go to an air show again. It has been far too many years between seeing the Thunderbirds or the Blue Angels in person.
Drafting with their Partners
You only get one chance in your life to experience the cars coming around the track at full speed for the first time. Nothing delivered by television has ever come close. Though NASCAR was still amazing from this standpoint it was still not on the order of the Indy 500. However, the amazing difference that I never expected was seeing how the cars partner up and draft behind each other. The photo above was taken at a 1/5000 of a second shutter speed and randomly caught on a high speed burst of photos with the lens fixed. Yes, they are moving at full speed and yes, they do run that close to each other all around the track. (The average speed was 130MPH)
Waltrip & Reutimann Create 17-Car Pileup
Though the days of Swede Savage are thankfully gone, at least for the most part due to all of the changes in race technology that have happened over the years, seeing a crash is person is not a happy moment. It was interesting to note the yells of excitement by the people surrounding us. My positive bias interprets this as being cheerful their driver was not involved – but it might be more of other drivers being eliminated from the competition. Then there is the practical matter – are there just too many cars on the track at the start?
Tony Stewart
Finally, the most interesting observation for myself was the amount of shuffling that was going on in positioning. Someone we know is a fan of car #14 and seeing it jump around on the position poll throughout the race was amazing. At the end, when the caution flag was thrown, I believe it was in second place and after the two full speed laps to finish the race it dropped back to 13th! There were 74 lead changes during the race leading one of the people I went with to make the comment that you could almost forget the first 150 laps of the race – heck, perhaps even more. Besides elimination, through accident or other failure, position seemed to not matter at all until the last lap.
The video I took from the event was largely me still learning about how a Canon 7D works when it comes to the task so although it is not great it is amazing what you can get from an DSLR with little to no experience on the video side and the built in microphone.
Related articles
- Daytona 500: Trevor Bayne Wins In Caution Filled Daytona 500 (bleacherreport.com)
- 2011 NASCAR Schedule: How The Daytona 500 Stacks Up (sbnation.com)
- Trevor Bayne wins the Daytona 500 (inquisitr.com)
