another race day

In New Hampshire there are two major Nascar races each year, these happen at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. One race being in the early summer and one right around the start of fall. Bobby works for Sylvania, who is a major race sponsor and because of this he got complimentary race tickets at work for both races. We decided to attend these races this year as an experience for the children. It was fun and difficult, exciting and boring and interesting yet LOUD. I have never been in a place with this loud of a noise, constant, deafening roaring of the engines. Both times we attended I later went to bed with ringing ears and was awoken from sleep by the roar of the cars as some sort of memory. It was very strange!

There is also the noise of the people and the circus atmosphere events. The race is only about 3 hours but the day begins at the track hours earlier due to the fact that people arrive early to beat the traffic or even camp there at the track. There are performers, karaoke, race simulators that bounce you around enough to be slightly scary! There are vendors for every driver and the track itself, oh and all the sponsors have tents too. There is a helipad for those coming from far away, or the drivers or those who just don't want to deal with the traffic. There are massive trucks all over the infield, these carry the race cars and the things the drivers needs from race to race through the season. There are dance contests, give aways and people getting drunk then providing their own sort of entertainment. Foods of all types being sold and clowns advertising the real circus. It is in a word, well two words, SENSORY OVERLOAD.

Being a sensitive sort I did find myself unable to stop holding my hands over my ears after awhile and that was before the race even started. There was a noisy dance contest, a busy sprint giveaway and a race simulator game in one area and that about did me in!

There are fun parts too though. It is fun to watch the cars when they're all packed together and yes I'll admit it, I found it fun to watch the crashes. It was fun to see all that is involved in pulling off and televising such a major event. Definitely interesting.

The traffic was the absolute worst part of race day. Last time we were stuck in the parking lot for hours. This time we parked off site and took a school bus in. This was better for arriving at the track but was quite long to get back to our cars. There was quite a line for the school buses and our driver anyway got somewhat lost and had to go around his route twice.

Will we go again next year, I suppose it depends on if any of the children have a burning desire to do so. I am glad we had this experience but we have had enough racing for now. We gave some tickets to our friends this year and their son, who is a huge race fan, will be 16 in a few months. I joked that he could take all the kids to the races next year!

So anyway here are some photo highlights.
Driving in at 9:00 am near the track we already see that they are re-configuring the road from Concord NH to Loudon NH to help with the traffic.



Taking a schoolbus from offsite parking. I have more schoolbus looking photos but they have my friends kids in too so I won't put them online.



One of the first things we did upon arrival at the track was visit a race simulator.


Tristan is tall enough on tip toe! They did let him drive the simulator.

We all tried but Tristan was the only one I was able to get pictures of. I did very badly at it and crashed constantly. The simulator really throws you around, it was almost scary!

The kids sat in a race car.

At noontime we found our seats and had some lunch.

Some of the pre- race things were the Clydesdale's and driver introductions.

The infield is just full of drivers trucks, media people, rescue vehicles and officials.

The stadium is HUGE.

By 1:00 we had shed some layers. The day started in the high 20's Farenheight and by 1:00 pm it was in the 80's! Tristan is putting in some ear plugs.

and they're off.....

The race holds the kids attention for awhile but 300 laps is a long time. They brought lots of toys and had fun with all these clown noses some people promoting the circus handed out.

There were several crashes but no injuries, that is the best type of crash!

I took 137 pictures and only got a handful of good ones. It's hard with everything moving so fast and lots of people in the stands prone to standing up.

random silliness

after one accident the ambulances rushed out but thankfully the driver was fine.

296 of 300 laps, nearly there!

The ending of the race was very confusing since two crashes occurred during the last few laps.

and it's over, I didn't even realize it had ended at first!

The winning car takes a lap, the driver gets a trophy and then the masses of people all try to leave at once!

The race ended at 5:00 or so, we were on a bus by 6:00 or so and finally back to our car at 7:20 it would have been at least 20-30 minutes sooner but the bus driver got lost. Home at just before 9:00 which was 1.5 hours earlier than after the last race so I felt thankful! On a non- race day it would only take us just 45-55 minutes to get to the speedway.

Only Hayley and Tristan wanted to attend the race this time. Colin found it all just too noisy, long and confining last time and Trevor just said no from the start. It worked out well as our friends brought two children as well and all the kids had fun on the school bus both times.