Brickyard 400

When I started thinking about turning 40 this year, I planned to go to a NASCAR race. Yes, I'm not a normal female because I would choose going to a sporting event over most other activities. With my birthday being in the spring, I was leaning toward Allen and I going to Vegas for a race, but after the health problems my step-father had back in January/February, I decided to stay around home and opted for a shopping trip with my friend, Myleea, who was also turning 40.

The Brickyard 400 wasn't one of the races I had ever planned to see, it just happened by accident. My son was going to visit with grandparents for a week and I started to wonder where the race was for the upcoming weekend. When I saw it was in Indy, I googled the distance, went to the Marriott site to see if we could stay on points and checked on tickets. The last hurdle was planning around Allen's schedule. He was suppose to be home on Friday night, but ended up taking a redeye in to make the trip possible.



Since we didn't get to go to the track on any of the days, except Sunday, our plan was to go early so we could take in all the sights of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I'll admit, the Brickyard isn't one of my favorite races, but to have the chance to go to a race there would be something to remember. We didn't have to walk far from our car to the track, but once we got to the race, we made up for the walking.

Our first line of business was going out to where the souvenir trailers were located to get AW a M&M racing hat. He likes watching Kyle Busch's, M&M car, mainly for the cool paint schemes, so I figured he would like that as a special treat. We bought a couple of other items as we walked around out there.



After having a couple of brats for breakfast, we came across the garage area and was able to watch the teams get their cars ready for the race. We lucked into finding the viewing area while looking for a restroom. You couldn't see all of the cars, but it was fun to see the ones you could up that close. We have been to races in Phoenix and Talladega, but haven't had pit passes, so this was the next best thing to having a pit pass.



Another fun thing was watching the teams push their cars down Gasoline Alley to pit road. While we were walking by, we saw the 42 and 00 cars being pushed to pit road.

We left Gasoline Alley and wondered around until we found the Speed stage. NASCAR Raceday was on so we stopped to watch John Roberts, Kyle Petty and Darrell Waltrip. I was surprised that there wasn't as many people over at it, but then again, it was a ways off of the beaten path.



Once we finished at the Speed stage, we were ready to go find our seats and rest for a while. The seats we had were in turn 4, but you were able to see into turn 3, plus most of the front stretch. The website, Laidback Racing gave excellent advice on where to sit at Indy. I also used it for the best places to park as well.

Since we were unsure about if we would be able to hear the PA system, we rented the Sprint FanView for the first time. At Phoenix, we rented a track scanner, so we thought we would try something different. I did have mixed reviews on using the Sprint FanView. One of the things I didn't like was that the audio feed was the same as the PA feed, so you would hear it on the PA, then on your headphones. We stopped listening to it and started listening to the driver's scanners. I did like the running order that you could display on the screen. We seldom used the TV feed since it was easier to watch on the infield screen than on the handheld. We decided the next time we go to a race, we'll stick with a regular scanner.

Other than being hot and going through a lot of water, we enjoyed our race experience at the Brickyard 400. My goal is still to get to Bristol for a race, but after being in the heat in Indy, I may opt for the spring race at Bristol instead of the night race in August.