A DAY AT THE RACES

There are an awful lot of descriptive adjectives that have become mundane or trite — gin clear water, snowy white peaks, blah-blah-blah — and visceral thrill is one of them.

But unless you describe a weekend at a NASCAR race as one in which you had 43 3500-pound, fire-belching, corrida-poster-like-covered, throttle stomping, metal tearing, sun-temperature-level hotrods sending sonic pulses through the gel of your 98-percent water fat-American body, you’re gonna’ have to settle for “visceral thrill.”

If the intellectual inanity of watching cars go around in circles for hours at a time has led you to pooh-pooh NASCAR racing as a sport for the unwashed minions of the Deep South, or the unwashed minions of the rest of society who couldn’t know how superb the latest company has been with Donzetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera House, you’ve confirmed one thing every NASCAR loving fans knows at some, er, gut level. You’re an effete snob with no more sense than it takes to decide whether to wear Manolo or John Robb opera pumps to the aforementioned event at the Met. And if that Lammermoor fella’ is any relation to Allmendinger in that 84 Red Bull Toyota, well, of course he’s good. Hell, he’s in the Show, ain’t he?

If on the other hand, you’ve a background in motorsports that allows you to unaffectedly pronounce Le Mans or Mille Miglia correctly, yet also know where Sebring and Daytona are (keeping the 24-hour scheme going) and you haven’t been to an ass-kicking NASCAR oval race, you truly are missing one of the greatest spectacles in motorsports.

DOVER
Me and two buds — my brother-in-law John and my best friend Art — went to Dover for the second race of the year at the track. It was also the second race in The Chase, which —for those of you who are NASCAR challenged — is what they have been calling their playoffs for the past four years or so. I won’t go into the details of scoring, but it was — in the world of stock cars — an important race.

We arrived on a Saturday via the Hampton Jitney. If you don’t live on Long Island you don’t know what that is, but it’s a luxury bus service that is most well known by city dwellers as an alternative to cars and trains to get back to the city after spending their weekends Out East where I reside.

We arrived around noon and made our way to the — hmmm, if it was a carnival, you’d call it the midway — expecting, as all good New Yorkers would, to get ripped off on cheap crap immortalizing our favorite drivers, etc.

To our surprise, the prices and apparel/souvenirs were of good quality and rationally priced. We took pictures like yahoos in NYC and otherwise enjoyed the hell out of ourselves, even when a monsoon-like rainstorm blew through (my thanks to the Toyota folks for allowing us to seek shelter in their tent and keeping the canopy from collapsing. Saying anything nice about Toyota is risky at a NACSAR event, but that’s where we found refuge, so kudos to Toyota).

The race was great. We baked in the sun for hours and the three of us — no wimps when it comes to consuming alcohol, which seems to be the purpose for the gathering — drank water and Gatorade and left our seats only once to evacuate said liquids. And we weren’t wearing diapers.

How anyone can sit in a blazing sun on aluminum seats that most people would use for refractor ovens and drink alcohol all day astounded us. We hydrated and were still exhausted, but everywhere we looked it seemed that beer was the liquid of the day and few were the worse for wear. And by the way … it was the most well-behaved crowd (considering the alcohol consumption) I’ve ever encountered anywhere. And the police presence, aside from being friendly, was minimal. Try that at Yankee Stadium or any other ball park or football arena any where.

The Nextel Cup race was on a Sunday, and the weather, while somewhat cooler and dryer, was as brutal sun-wise as the Saturday. And, while the race on Saturday was a 200 miler, the race on Sunday was a 400 miler.

Without belaboring things, we saw a duplicate of Saturday with five times the amount of people. The speedway seats 140,000 people and you sit as close together as you do at a Broadway show … only on hard aluminum (thank you John for the seatpads. My ass doesn’t have the padding it used to).

When they launch on the green flag, the combination of noise and pure thunder brought literal tears to my eyes (thank God for sunglasses), and, yes, it gets a bit boring between miles 150 and 250, but if you have any interest in motorsports you can’t help but marvel at what these guys do with cars that weigh as much as a Soccer Mom’s SUV.

If you haven’t been to a NASCAR race you must try it, whether you like racing or not. This is a show, a spectacle, a day outside, a day of people watching extraordinaire, a day of partying, a day of wishing and one helluva day of fun.