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| This was my "the shot" for the weekend. Marcos Ambrose won the Zippo 200 Nationwide Series race on Saturday. | Click on the photo to view it larger. |
... so we (wife & I) "did a NASCAR thing" this past weekend.
Sort of.
We went out on Saturday mid-day'ish ... not really knowing what to expect and sort of just on a recon type thing. Back track just a bit. I'm not necessarily a "NASCAR fan". I enjoy watching it for the entertainment value that it can sometimes provide - but a fan? 'Eh ... that'd be a stretch. Formula 1 on the other hand. A Fan. Definitely a fan.
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| Coming into town Saturday Kyle Busch's team had a car parked in front of a local grocery store. ( wife had to get something... ) Obviously good publicity for the team and the event. Assumption is that this was likely a testing / backup car in the event that the actual race car got smashed up. | Click on the photo to view it larger. |
So anyway ... not being a hard core type fan of the sport per se we didn't really know what exactly to expect. Again - just sort of feeling it out and seeing what the tickets and passes that we had were going to offer us. The access that we had was actually very nice - and come Sunday we could do a "Fan Walk". Now I didn't know what a "Fan Walk" was but we could do it on Sunday. Turns out that the fan walk is where you can walk right out onto the race course and wander around down in pit lane prior to the race. This allowed for up close viewing of the racers pit crews and, eventually, the cars as they were brought out and parked prior to "Racers Start Your Engines!". The fan walk was kind of cool - definitely a nice plus.
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| As captured from Sunday mornings "Fan Walk". Spare tires are at the ready in Jeff Gordon's pit box. I had to specifically get his tires for my wife. She "loves Jeffy". <grin> I asked her if she wanted to touch his tires. "These are the actual tires that he might use during the race.... " I told her. She gave me the 'you're such a dork' look. :) | Click on the photo to view it larger. |
I once again very quickly, and frustratingly, was reminded how much I dislike being a "regular person" getting banished off to the far edges of periphery. Translation: I used to be a U.S. Navy Photographers Mate back in the middle 1980's. My ID card, and the fact that I worked in the photo lab was synonymous with being "Press". We, those of us from the photo lab, could go damn near *anywhere* at any event on any U.S. military base. That - as a photographer - is the cats ass. I miss those days. I really, seriously need to get credentials so that I can get to the good spots for shooting events. {sigh} It is what it is though - I was fortunate enough to be offered a nice pair of tickets to the event (twist my arm you know ...) and had an opportunity to go to one of the bigger sporting events in the state. So we did.
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| The fire rescue folks actually had some of the better seats in the house for viewing. I felt kind of bad for some of them though - must have been hotter then hell sitting in that truck wearing what appears to be full gear. I wanted to get on top of the truck and snipe off of it. <grin> No - I didn't inquire. | Click on the photo to view it larger. |
Back to Saturday: We arrived right as qualifying was coming to a close for "the main event" on Sunday. I just missed getting a shot of Jeff Gordon on his qualifying lap that landed him in the #1 position. I did grab a shot of Jimmy Johnson though and then ... that was it. Wife & I kind of looked at one another and were like - "... guess we were a little late for qualifying. Yeah - but Jeffy is on pole!" ( she said - she's a Jeffy fan ... ) We scored some chow and hung out until the Saturday race started - the "Nationwide Series'. It's like the under card fight prior to the main event on Sunday - but sometimes the main event guys race in it too. Not really sure how else to describe it. So the race starts.
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| Jimmy Johnson right at the closing seconds of Saturday's qualifying for Sunday's main event. Jeff Gordon had just gone by seconds earlier securing the pole position. We had literally just gotten there and, naturally, I missed that shot. {sigh} | Click on the photo to view it larger. |
***
LOUD *** Mind you this was not unexpected but these things are *
ridiculously* loud. This is where I was quickly frustrated with the 'quality' of photo's I was going to be able to grab. (NOT) See comments above re: not being able to get into good positions. I started shooting the race trying to find clean views, any clean views, that I could find and quickly figured that there basically weren't any (
that I had access to) and that the one singular spot where I was able to kinda-sorta get shots became tiresome very quickly. I lasted about 10 laps and was bored out of my skull.
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| Sunday - the place was a zoo. It was crazy crowded and just tiresome even trying to simply move. We could not (quite literally) get out of there fast enough. | Click on the photo to view it larger |
We left and came home. I mowed the lawn and played with the dogs. We were on the fence re: going back up on Sunday, but ultimately decided that we would. I / we knew that Sunday's main event "Sprint Cup" series race was going to be a zoo. That's an understatement. There must have been at least twice as many people than there were on Saturday. The event, like greedy ass airlines, oversold access to the hospitality tents, the race was closing off previously accessible walking routes to and from the viewing area's and forcing hordes of people to walk long distances to get back to their seats. It was just ... irksome. And slow. (
masses of bodies all trying to move from point a to point b) And hot. By the time that we finally got back to the tented area where we planned on grabbing some lunch and watching the race we were done. Again - the hospitality area that we had access to appeared to be overwhelmed with the sheer number of bodies that had invaded it. There was literally no place to sit and eat. There was no way in hell that I was going to be able to get anywhere near the one little spot that I had discovered yesterday to kinda-sorta get actual race pics. This was still about an hour or so before the race was to get started. We bagged it and decided to call it a day.
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| This was kind of a fun one from the Sunday "Fan Walk" thing. I told this pit crew guy that he had basically just committed his driver to winning. I think he crashed out. | Click on the photo to view it larger |
I guess I'm kinda ok with having gone - it wasn't all "bad". I have a small
gallery of photo's that I grabbed from both days up - check them out here. Feel free to grab any if you're a fan of any of the racers that I may have grabbed.
Gallery is here if the linked text doesn't work for some reason -- http://galleries.jdanvers.com/nascarwg14
I should have gone to Unadilla though for the MX Nationals.
Yep .... that woulda been cool.
-=- jd -=-
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