Raceday in Sonoma dawned sunny and calm. Stepping outside for my morning constitutional, I had a good feeling about the day. Whatever happened, even without the perk of pit passes, we were going to have a good day.
Stopping for some breakfast, we then headed out for the track, bright and early, knowing, from Friday’s trip, that the main road to the track is 2 lanes…it was going to be slow going.
Actually, it was worse…CA 37 was backed right up to before the bridge where it was still 4 lanes…this was going to be a long trip.
It took us an hour to drive a 15 minute drive.
Finally arriving at the track, we hopped on the shuttle, having had enough of the walk over hill and dale to the track on Friday…we were standers on the shuttle, which reminded us of riding the cable cars in San Francisco the day before.
On arrival to the track, we wandered around a bit, then headed over to the 99 souvie hauler to pick up the banner. Coming back through the tunnel from the infield, where the haulers were set up, we immediately headed down to the foot of the main grandstands, where our seats were, to see if we would be lucky enough to at least have the 99 pit stall in sight from our seats.
No such luck. The first half of pit lane is down into the hairpin turn, and the second half was in front of us..and they were down in the first half.
Drat!! We were going to have to make do with watching the 8 team’s pit stops again!!! And we couldn’t even cat call the 99 crew guys to get their attention and wave Hi, because unless you had a pit or garage pass, there was no way to get down there!!
Oh, what’s a stalker to do??
After watching Raceday for a while, and getting the banner the required air-time from a couple of different locations, we snapped a pic of it with my camera phone, and tried to send it to the Jumbotron…I never saw it, so I’m not sure I was successful, but I was hoping Carl and the crew would see it, as we couldn’t get anywhere near the driver intros to stand with it…
Splitting up, we put our impromptu CCN intrepid photographers' plan into action…I say impromptu, because I was returning a text to a certain Edhead, and turned around, and Anne was gone. LOL After scanning the area for a few minutes, I shrugged and figured she’d been to enough races, she was more than able to take care of herself.
When I finally got through to her on the phone, I found out apparently she had figured the same thing, because she was up in her seat.
So we put our 2-pronged plan into action. With Anne in the stands with her camera armed and ready for drive intros from THAT angle, I remained on the infield, and worked my way in behind the souvenir haulers along the fence, until I was right by where the drivers came off the stage and got on their trucks, BEHIND the stage..
I took more than 350 pics today alone. Anne was close behind. I figure she and I are a pretty good CCN photog team, if one missed it, the other got it, and we got the same thing from different angles…Gene, let me know what you think, but I think I deserve some sort of bonus, and Anne DEFINITELY needs to be on staff…oh, and can we talk about CCN’s travel budget and possible trackside perks??? A little golf cart would be cool….
Oooh, and we can be the CCN track weather team, too, Gene…it was sunny, as I mentioned earlier, but as the day progressed, it became QUITE windy!! At one point I was nearly hanged by my ticket lanyard, as it wrapped up in a knot and around my neck…and I have one video shot during the race that features my lens cap, flapping on it’s tether…no sunburn today, I wore my sunscreen, but the windburn…the face is a little tight.
Anyway, with driver intros over, I headed back across to the grandstand, but as my seat was in row 43, (as they were last-minute tickets, Anne and I had separate seats, in different sections of the grandstand) and not quite ready for that climb yet, I stopped down front and stood politely behind the red line about 2 feet from the railing separating the stands from the pit stalls in front of it, that’s supposed to keep fans from falling into the pits and suing the track, I guess, right across from the 99 car. The drivers were finally making their way back around that long track and being dropped off.
And then it occurred to me that if I stood right there long enough, Carl was bound to come along. I mean, that was his office, right there in front of me, and it was time for him to go to work!! There’s a good chance he was going to be there…LOL
So I stood a while, snapping pics at random…until a track employee came along and tried to shoo me away…they were doing that to everyone, trying to keep people from hanging around down there.
With a smile, I politely said “I will move as soon as Carl gets here!” indicating the car in front of me.
Thankfully he just smiled and moved on…temp employee, just doing his job. But if he had tried to move me, I mighta had to do something bad!!!
Before I knew it, there Carl was!!!
As you can imagine, my camera was pretty much continually snapping at this point, and all the way up until the prayer and national anthem, when I just snapped a couple and then put it down…but as soon as that anthem was over, right back at it!!
I take my job very seriously!!!
AND I’ve got a Bob Butt Shot!!! I’m so proud of myself…
Actually, I’ve got a LOT of butt shots, but that’s a topic for a different post…
Finally, the drivers were all in their cars, so I hooked up my scanner, grabbed a beverage, and started the hike…I stopped half way up to take pics of the start, yeah, that’s why I stopped, uh huh, couldn’t neglect my duties…
Finally reaching row 43, I realized a man was sitting in my seat…now, I could have made him move, but his young son was next to him, and I didn’t want to bother them…besides, 2 more rows, and I was standing at the top!
What an awesome spot to watch the race from. Shaded by the suites above. Walk down to one end you had the perfect view of the hairpin turn, turn 12 or whatever, as well as the garage, and walk to the other end, you could see much of the rest of the track.
AWESOME!!!
After a while, it occurred to me that Anne might appreciate that view…a quick text, and she joined me.
We spent the entire race, on our feet, moving from one end, to the other, to the Start/Finish line in the middle.
What a great race!! It was cool, it was different from any race I have attended, from the setting to the track itself, to the fact that the cars are going backwards past us (I’m a round-track girl, I’m used to them going counter-clockwise, not clockwise!!)…but as much as was different, so much was the same…the atmosphere, the fans, the kids in their Dale Jr and Jeff Gordon, and YES, Carl Edwards shirts.
We got to see Juan Pablo Montoya and team in victory lane from above…the garage from above…even the mysterious part of pit lane where Carl and Jamie where pitted that we never could see from our seats became sort of evident to our prying eyes, as we walked around the track afterwards (of course, we walked counter-clockwise…we almost didn’t even talk about it, just did it automatically!!) and peeked around the Goodyear haulers parked in front of it to finally find where he had pitted. Of course, by this time, no-one was around and the stall was all packed up, but at least that mysterious part of the track was revealed to us…with it’s abundance of lugnuts…hehe got some more souvenirs!!
And let me tell you, the TV does NOT do the hills on this track justice. I mean, I always knew it was hilly, but until you have seen it for yourself, until you have WALKED it and huffed and puffed up and down those hills, you just don’t realize how hilly it is! Knowing just how hard these drivers really must have to work to not only master the left AND right turns, but also the HILLS, I will never view a race at this track the same way.
I’d say if you ever get to attend a road course race, even if, like me, it’s not your favorite type of racing, do it….it really is an excellent experience. Just bring your hiking shoes if you do Infineon…
An interesting shuttle ride up from the track after our walk (they were directing people to drive DOWN the same narrow, zig-zagging road the shuttles used to go up the hill to the drop-off for the parking lots…one lady nearly lost her left front fender because she was a little slow to realize she had 4 feet of space to her right, and there was a huge shuttle bus coming right at her to her left…we cleared her by about an inch) found two very foot-weary women ready to sit down. That’s all we wanted after a 3 hour race on our feet and 1 hour track walk as well as a day of walking: to just sit down. I didn’t even use the seat I paid for (or the other ones that we had paid for that were supposed to be pit passes)…but it was still worth it.
Sitting in the Back 40 parking lot, as we lovingly have named Lot 5 this weekend, we are now moving, with the Back 40 CD blaring…Carl’s rolling us home.
Here’s hoping we get back to civilization before the restaurants all close…that pre-track walk corn dog seems a long, long time ago…and a Bud sure would taste good!!
Anne just said “You know, we’ve done so much in the past few days, it feels like they shaved Tom weeks ago!!!” LOL We sure sucked what experiences we could out of this weekend!!
9pm Sunday night, and we just NOW got out onto the main road…well, one of them…here’s hoping we get food, or we’re going to have to subsist on Wheat Thins. Not that I couldn’t stand to lose a couple of pounds, but I think I took care of that with all the walking this weekend.
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