Finally! We decided to do this in December, bought our tickets and paid for our camping in January and today we sat in the stands to enjoy wildcard qualifying for the Allstar Race on Saturday and the Campingworld Truck Series race. Great seats right near the start/finish line and midway up so we can see the back stretch! (I’m learning the lingo!) The big weekend race is Saturday night and A.J Allmendinger and Clint Bowyer won a spot in the race with the Allstars.
Today I wore my Jeff Gordon shirt. I have several shirts with different drivers I will wear this week. I just couldn’t decide on only one driver!
A.J. known as “the Dinger” is who we were rooting for as he is from Los Gatos and so we think of him as a neighbor! We even bought Paul one of his shirts that for now hangs in our windshield as our token NASCAR fan showing. I am hoping Paul wears the shirt tonight but maybe not as he has a really bad case of poison oak again and has modified several shirts to reduce the rub!
Before the race can begin we have to have introductions! Two drivers we will be watching, not sure about rooting for them yet!
#10 Danica. She is a woman in a mans world. I wish she would do better. I really want to be a Fan!
The Dinger!
Back to the race! The Allstar qualifying was not real exciting except when Boyer overtook A.J. after 18 of the first 20 laps. The second half was all Boyer with A.J. right behind and the rest of the 20 or so cars way back. There was only one caution in the 40 laps so as a fan it wasn’t much to watch.
The final pace lap on the back stretch
And they are off- this is the only time the #3 led the race, as A.J. overtook him near the first turn
And the winners are:
#15 Clint Boyer and the #47 A.J. Allmendinger
And then the fans vote one more driver in and the winner is….. #98 Josh Wise. He is a very new driver and has embraced social media and it worked!
Just like any other sporting event NASCAR has filler stuff between events while you at home get to watch commercials. Tonight they had a parade of very fancy Big Rig trucks.
A really big truck, with a big truck and another truck!
All lite up
Then the truck race. There was some action and wrecks but mostly the #51 Kyle Busch was in the front for every lap and usually way ahead of any competition. The closest anyone got was after cautions for maybe a lap. The trucks do go pretty fast and we saw one car lifted right off the ground for a second. No injuries, only some sparks and most trucks finished the race.
The trucks ready for qualifying
Today we get to see Jake Owens perform on the track along with Train, and then it is a couple hours of NASCAR’s best in the Allstar Race!