Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Indy car racing rocks

I took the boys Saturday to the Indy car race at Texas Motor Freeway. There were 73,000 people there, although it's hard to know that because the seating area stretches for like a half mile.
It was a relatively upscale crowd compared to what I’ve heard about NASCAR fans, with the females often flashing people all over the place and lots of overall redneck behavior. I don’t think I’d want to subject the kids to that. (Even though I saw a lot of that as a kid at 1970s-era Texas chili cookoffs!)
Those NASCAR events draw like 250,000 people, and it practically takes days to get in and out of the parking lot. Plus, you wind up parking literally miles away from the track. So I think I’ll pass on that and maybe hit the Indy race again next year. What was great is that they divided it into two races, with the same drivers. They just switched up poll positions. It all counted toward points and standings on the Indy circuit, kind of like NASCAR does. Danica Patrick and all that were there.
The first race was over in an hour. That was plenty, and we were out of there and swimming in the hotel pool by the time the second race started. I imagine it took awhile for people to get out of there. Their cars go WAY FASTER than NASCAR vehicles.
NASCAR cars are capable of going about 215 but usually travel below 200 in a race. The Indy cars AVERAGED around 212 during this particular race, and they go so fast that you can hardly pick out the number on the car as it zooms by. The sound is indescribable and just gets into your bones.
Most people wear earplugs for protection, but unlike a lot of other really loud, eardrum-damaging things for which you use earplugs, you kind of want to listen to the race at full volume because it’s such an adrenaline rush to do so.

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