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Posted on 08/27/2004 3:33:51 AM PDT by glock rocks
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Track Specs: 0.533-mile concrete oval
Degree of banking in corners: 36 degrees
Degree of banking in straights: 16 degrees
Straightaways are 650 feet long.
Concrete racing surface is 40 feet wide.
Seating capacity: ~160,000
Bristol has two pits roads: 21 pit stalls on the front stretch and 21 on the back stretch(1 must be shared)
Pit Stall Size: 25.5 feet long, 15.5 feet wide
Pit Road Speed: 35 mph
Happy Hour Practice: Friday, August 27, 6:10 - 6:55pm/et tape delayed - to be broadcast on TNT at 7:00pm/et.
Busch Series Food City 250 from Bristol: Friday, August 27, 8:00pm/et on TNT.
Under the lights at Bristol ping.
Rusty likes it here ... maybe?
This ought to be a fun race.
... like flying a fighter jet in a gymnasium
Thanks a lot! Now I'm really reeling. ;)
As you drive into Bristol and get onto Rte 11E the nicely paved highway rolls around homes and the town. Signs are everywhere advertising "need tix/got tix" and after a little hill, the track pops up into view. Built into the side of a hill and into the valley, the track itself is below grade.
The mystic appeal of Bristol is the immense numbers of people camping. I was once told by a track official that upwards of 110,000 people were camping around the track. As you can see in this pic, taken from the top 'floor' of the track facing northeast
there are plenty of spaces for camping. In fact, the entire area surrounding the track is filled with campsites. The best part of Bristol is that they open the gates early in the morning. Our group has gone up there and literally been the first people inside. You can sit up under the roof, out of the sun, and spend the entire day watching practice laps and qualifying. You can go down low and sit in the front row, some 15 feet from the track and feel the hot rubber bounce off your legs. During down time, you can hear the crew members chatting while they work on the cars. Bristol tix are expensive and you have to work hard to get them, but they are worth every penny. By the time the last lap is run on Saturday night, you could have spent almost 24 hours INSIDE the track watching your cars go fast and turn left. More pics will be put up on my photo site for ya'll to peruse this weekend. GRRRRRR
NASCAR outsourcing to Mexico City, Toyota Jap Racing trucks, German drivers for the road courses...keep it up and I'll be watchin ARCA from now on.
GO RYAN NEWMAN...TEAM ALLTEL 12 RULES!!!
"... like flying a fighter jet in a gymnasium"
36 degrees, nah, they need to be 90's.
But for those working the street rather than strolling it, the yearly event can be just as fun and rewarding despite the often questionable questions.
“The most comical question we get is ‘Do we sleep in it?’ ” said Trina DeMarco, from beside the bright-yellow-and-orange Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. “Someone asked me if I was Oscar Mayer’s daughter and if this is our family car,” said co-pilot April Lopez. “And they were serious. Dead serious.”
The two girls log more than 1,000 miles a week traveling the Midwest in the Wienermobile. But they were called out of their territory due to Family Race Night’s overwhelming popularity.
They are new to NASCAR and fresh out of college with advertising and public relations degrees. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts natives, both admit they have never followed the sport.
What’s the No. 1 thing they’ve learned so far? Lopez said it’s that NASCAR fans are “hard core” loyal to their drivers and
sport. The two periodically conduct various contests and lead groups in singing: “I wish I was an Oscar Mayer wiener.” One such contest entails rolling Hot Wheels cars down a track, numbered 1 to 6, and whichever fan’s car reaches the end first receives a prize. “People say ‘I want to be this number or be this one,’ and I’m like, ‘It’s just a number, people. You know?’ ” Lopez said. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, not No. 5. He hasn’t won a race in years,’ or something like that.”
While the Oscar Mayer girls are busy quelling good-natured squabbles over drivers, show car personnel are busy explaining that they are not their car’s famous wheelmen.
“They ask that all the time,” said Ronnie Weaver, show car curator for Richard Childress Racing. “And they want your shirt, too. They’ll take it right off your back. I’m serious. They’ll grab at it and stuff.”
Weaver, a friend of Childress, is one of RCR’s eight show car drivers. In only his second week working part-time for the team, he said the best part is meeting new, yet like-minded, racing folks.
“My first show I was able to take one of Dale Earnhardt’s cars out and show it,” Weaver said. “I’m the same age as Dale, by just a few days, and I started out with racing watching Dale’s daddy run on the dirt at Concord (N.C.). I grew up with Dale, so it’s pretty neat to be able to do that. People still get emotional about him.”
Todd Cooper, of Abingdon, Va.-based Morgan-McClure Motorsports, said NASCAR fans know more about their sport than they did just a few years ago.
Now a gear and transmission specialist in the race shop, Cooper was a regular transporter of the team’s show cars in the ’90s. Then, he said, teams could get away with displaying cars with a fiberglass body or non-race parts. That’s not the case anymore, as nearly all of the cars on display Thursday had actually been race-worn.
Just two weeks ago, Morgan-McClure’s show car was twisting around Watkins Glen Road Course in New York. “They are very, very educated with all the TV and radio coverage,” Cooper said. “You can’t fool them, when years ago you could. They wouldn’t know the difference between a race car and a show car. Now they really know, so this is our real deal.”
Kevin O’Connor is fairly new to the NASCAR traveling circus. He has been a show car driver for Cal Wells’ Tide Racing team for nearly a year.
Transporting a version of the car that is “cut away” to allow easy viewing of its inner workings, O’Connor said one comment arises for him again and again from aspiring comedians.
“I get all the half-a-car jokes,” O’Connor said. “ ‘Did you forget the other half of the car?’ and stuff like that. And they all think they’re the first to say it.”
____________________________________
By Jeff Bobo
NET News Service
BRISTOL — A common sight around Bristol Motor Speedway on race weekends is the huge throng of fans walking along Volunteer Parkway to and from the racetrack.
Speedway Motorsports Inc. CEO Bruton Smith, who owns BMS, noticed that the large line of pedestrian fans often bulges out into the street, creating safety issues with vehicular traffic on the road. Smith said he was concerned about pedestrian safety, and that’s why he made a call to the state of Tennessee to help him do something about it.
On Thursday, Gov. Phil Bredesen answered that call, visiting the track to announce a $4 million project that will include new, wider walkways on both sides of Volunteer Parkway near the racetrack.
“We’ve been begging for this because I could see that if we didn’t do something someone was going to get killed out there intermingling with all of those vehicles,” Smith said. “I think what this will do is probably prevent a death because it was inevitable, and I’m proud that the governor and everybody came on board so that we could make this possible.”
The estimated cost for the overall project stands at $4.08 million, much of which will be provided by a Governor’s Enhancement Grant.
Preliminary plans call for the construction of 12,400 linear feet of sidewalks that will extend along both sides of Volunteer Parkway. The project also includes construction of pedestrian bridges over Beaver and Back creeks, landscaping and other pedestrian safety features.
The state portion of the grant is $1.95 million, with a match of $487,000 to be provided by BMS. The project will also include modifications in the roadway system including the addition of turn lanes on Volunteer Parkway and Whitetop Road, as well as modifications to Old Thomas Bridge Road. That portion of the project’s estimated cost is about $1.64 million and will be paid by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the city of Bristol.
There is no schedule at this time for completion of the project. “The details of the design have yet to be worked out, but the money is there through the state, TDOT, the city of Bristol and the track itself,” Bredesen said. “I came out here at their invitation and looked at the area around the racetrack on a day that wasn’t busy like this. It was clear to me that as this place has grown so rapidly and so large that we needed to pay some attention to getting the pedestrian traffic and the automobile traffic separated, or else there’s going to be
problems.” “What this is about is providing sidewalks, pedestrian overpasses and generally doing a first-rate job of organizing travel to and from the speedway.”
Bredesen noted that with the more than $1 billion economic impact that BMS brings to the region, spending taxpayers’ money on infrastructure around the track is a good investment.
“This experience of being here on race weekend is unlike anything else in the state of Tennessee and probably unlike anything else that goes on in the country,” Bredesen said. “We need to step up and support this. This is economic activity just like a manufacturing plant or a retail store and is deserving of the same type of support that we give those other kinds of businesses.”
Protective custody would be appropriate.
Better walking lanes in and out of the track would be a great improvement. I've seen drunks stagger across White Top right in front of moving traffic, barely making it to the median in time. There should be some bridges over the highway just like Charlotte.
Getting to the camping areas across White Top can involve a mile and half trek on a road or going cross country thru the cow pastures, in the dark, braving the barbed wire, cows, horses and manure. If you have bad knees or are just plain tired, it can be a true ordeal to get back to the RV. It makes that late night cold one REALLY GOOD!
Bruton and the town should really strive to put in decent pathways for all the crowd to use.
G
Saturday Night short track bangin' -- this is what racing is all about baby!
>>short track bangin' <<
Kinda like commutimg in Kalifornia.
Except in Kali, they have better helicopter coverage.
Sometimes you have to use the chrome horn. :-)
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