Darlington – May 13, 2006 2006 May 19
On the Saturday night of May 13′th I went to see the NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Darlington Speedway in Darlington, South Carolina. This was my first race ever at the historic super-speedway. In fact, it was my first race ever in the state of South Carolina (Another state crossed off my list!). The parents of the person I went to have a house in North Carolina that we stayed at. It was about a 2.5 hour ride from his parents house to Darlington. The traffic near the track was slow, but moving. Just before we pulled into the track, two people in a pick up truck in the lane towards our left pulled alongside us and commented on our New Jersey license plate. Seems that they grew up in NJ and were now living in North Carolina. A little more conversation lead us to find out that they grew up in East Brunswick – which borders the town I grew up in. Talk about a small world! Actually running into people from New Jersey isn’t all that hard. I seem to manage to do it almost everywhere I go. But the fact that they grew up in the next town is interesting and since they appeared to be about the same age as us, I wouldn’t be surprised if we drank a few beers at a local watering hole at the same time before.
Anyway, back to race-related stuff. We pulled into the parking lot about 4.5 hours before the start of the race. This gave us some time to enjoy some food and go shopping for souvenirs. I ended up buying a few things from JJ Yeley’s trailer and from Kenny Schrader’s trailer. I was really hoping to get a Robby Gordon t-shirt but I never did find his trailer (and the one person I saw wearing a Robby Gordon shirt said he couldn’t find it either).
We had top row seats on the front stretch towards turn one. The seats were great and we could see almost the whole track. The only place we couldn’t see was just in front of us. This was because of the angle of the stands. Anyway, I was quite pleased with the seats (purchased on e-bay). The race was a good one with only one real accident and a few cautions for solo spins and debris. In the beginning of the race, Robby Gordon and Jimmy Johnson were fling towards the front from deep in the field. They were routinely 0.2 to 0.3 seconds faster then the leaders even though they were passing cars. Unfortunately for Robby, he bent in his fender and lost the handling a little, but still managed a top 15. Greg Biffle took the win over a fast charging Jeffy Gordon at the end. We left right after the checkered flag flew and due to a strategically chosen parking spot made it to the highway without dealing with much traffic for the ride home. The ride back was uneventful besides someone (for some unknown reason) driving in reverse on the highway). My first visit to Darlington was quite an enjoyable experience and I hope to get to it again. If you ever have a chance to get to this historic track, I’d recommend that you don’t turn it down.
My 2006 season race viewing stats after Darlington:
Races: 11
Tracks: 8 (6 new) (143 lifetime)
States: 7 (2 new) (34 + DC lifetime)