Die hard Nascar fans are not the only people who enjoy the races. The weekend-long experience is enough to make many seasoned tailgaters blush
Girls, barbecue, music, and top of the line RVs means only one thing, but this 48-hour tailgate isn’t leading up to any kick off.
NASCAR is unlike anything else you would expect. It is as if the anticipation of college football, the debauchery of Girls Gone Wild, and the horsepower of about a thousand Kia Rios is all thrown into one lot surrounded by a one and half mile moat of blacktop.
Simply, today’s NASCAR isn’t your granddaddy’s dirt track. While in the end it is who crosses the line first that EPSN includes on Sportscenter, the weekend is a nonstop party that represents much more than just who ends up in the winner’s circle.
Normally a drive down I-35 doesn’t lead one to any spectacular scenes, being that most days out of the year, when you look to the right of the highway on your way into Fort Worth all you see is empty grandstands towering above a vacant oval track.
The magic of it all is that in only a few days leading up to a big race, the barren wasteland that is Texas Motor Speedway transforms into a utopia for all that is American: family, commercialism, sex, alcohol, and speed.
For those who ignorantly assumed NASCAR is just for grown men missing teeth, they couldn’t be further from the truth.
Starting Wednesday night of race week, die hard fans and race teams alike start to set up camp and by Friday afternoon the transformation of the speedway into a colossal nomadic campsite is complete.
Those that take part in this conversion are not merely jobless locals but Americans of all walks of life that have made long treks just to be apart of the spectacle.
It is not until Friday night that this circus gets into full swing because by this point almost everyone has been able to escape their monotonous lives so that they can join the four mile radius with thousands of their closet friends.
Being that the actual race is days away, an outsider feels lost in the reasoning of why one should cram into the infield until the gentlemen start their engines.
Ironically, as the sun goes down light illuminates the issue of while people come so early. Friday night, much like Saturday night, is basically a massive party where strangers drink together, grill masters show off their culinary talents with all they can blacken or smoke where certain women think that plastic beads are a fair trade for the removal of their top.
Saturday is a day of recovery and discovery. The activities one can choose from range from sleeping the day away, picking up where they left off the night before, taking in the nationwide race or strolling down the nearly quarter mile of vendors lined up along one side of the track.
With an endless line of trailers of countless vendors promoting and selling products ranging from premium snuff to Disney die cast toy cars, this avenue of retail is truly a spectacle.
Sunday arrives after a couple of long nights and hot days and by one o’clock, more than two hundred thousand have converged for the main event, the Sprint Cup Race.
By the time they announce the winner some already start to pack up camp but for many it will take one more night of rest before they have the energy to make the journey home.
Like the original transformation, just like that Texas Motor Speedway turns back into empty grandstands towering over a vacant oval track, but this time with scattered beer cans everywhere.
The beauty of NASCAR is that it has evolved from a dirt track event into an overall experience truly unattainable by any other sport. You can deny it all you want, but once you spend a weekend at a race you will truly realize that it is much more than a couple supped up Impalas only taking left turns.
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