continued from Race #2
In the wake of Martin Truex Jr's 2nd place finish (minus the penalty points) in the NRA500 @ Texas Motor Speedway, I'll tell you about my first trip to Dover International Speedway in 2007.
My friend Mike (that I watched my first Daytona 500 with - see my journey), my other brother and I decided to go down to Dover for the spring race on the first weekend in June. We left CT early Saturday afternoon, drove (2 1/2 hours) down the NJ Turnpike and stayed in the Philadelphia area since all hotels in the Dover area were sold out.
We of course went into Philly to eat some dinner (wiz wit) at Pat's King of Steaks since Geno's is 2nd rate. (my opinion) We had a great evening out and about in the greater Philly area, then went back to the hotel to get some shuteye before the next day's festivities.
(what we thought would be) Raceday
We woke up and made our way out to breakfast. Since we don't get to Philly too often, we decided to go back to Pat's for breakfast. How could you say no to this?
Pat's King of Steaks (wiz wit)
After our Richard Simmon's approved breakfast, we made the 1h15m drive to Dover. The skies were overcast and the rain was on and off but we had hopes of actually watching a race that day. We made it over to one of the parking areas to the east of the track (across route 1) when the skies started to open up. We went to the store grabbed some beers in the hopes we would get back to the track for some tailgating. The weather of Tropical Storm Barry kept getting worse and we had no hotel to head back to so we went over to Buffalo Wild Wing's for some lunch. After deciding we would all call into work for Monday, that lunch turned into dinner which turned into us closing the place down. With no hotel, we decided to sleep in the car out in the parking lot.
Oh yeah - this is the car that 3 men slept in (1 in the back seat and 1 each in the front seats).
All would have been fine if we could leave the top down but with the weather, the top stayed up! It was a rainy humid overnight so I recall opening the window or door every so often, falling asleep and then having the rain wake me up. But who cares - I was going to get to watch my 3rd live NASCAR race!
Raceday
We woke up Monday morning to clear skies! It was my first time to a concrete track - the type of concrete that rips apart tires and sends rubber drifting into the first 20 rows. Leave a cup of beer in front of you for a few laps and it will soon have a black film across the top. Dover is a 1 mile track - similar to the bull ring known as Bristol Motor Speedway but much faster.
We were there to see Martin Truex Jr's first ever win (@ his home track) in NASCAR's premiere series (and only to this day). The beating and banging we saw in that race and the confrontation between Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart (confrontation at Dover) was enough to bring me back.
NASCAR, I'm addicted!
next up: Race #4 @ Pocono Raceway (my wife's first NASCAR race)
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