Motor Sport NASCAR - Trip to Darlington Raceway - "The Lady in Black"

Hi Guys,

Just returned from a trip to the States where I was lucky enough to be able to get another thing marked off my "bucket list" and that is to see a real NASCAR round.
Was a great experience and of course I was barracking for our man Marcos Ambrose, who had a reasonable weekend. Darlington in South Carolina is known as one of the hardest tracks to race on and has a couple of nick names like "The Lady in Black" and "Too Tough to Tame". It's not the biggest, or the fastest, but requires a great amount of concentration on behalf of the drivers.
Anyway here's a few pics from the weekend....Saturday Night Nationwide race won by Kyle Busch.

Starting at dusk...




And we're racing



The ones with four wheels worked better!



Getting darker now..



Just re-arranged the aerodynamics a bit...



Big pile up on the back straight..



Had a good view of the pits, which would be especially handy the following night..



The Winner, Kyle Busch doing his Victory Burn Out!



---------- Post added 03-06-2011 at 04:37 PM ----------

Prior to the main Cup race the next day there was the chance to do a pit walk which was pretty cool...

View along the pit lane -



The Grandstand -



Getting Ambrose's tyres ready-



Ambrose's car waiting on pit lane..



Me, sitting on the #9 pit wall



Another favorite car - Clint Bowyer's number 33



Another nice evening as the cars get going..



Marcos qualified 7th , which isn't bad for him on an oval -



Marcos in the pits later in the race, I was lucky enough to be sitting just about opposite -



And not a bad shot of him taking off..



Mr Five-time, Jimmie Johnson



Some guys haven't got the whole pitting thing worked out yet ! ;-)



Damage to the right hand side like this is called a "Darlington Stripe". Not too many cars avoid getting one..



Mr Five-time loses it on the main straight



And Joey Logano stacks it along there too -



But no one does it better than Clint Bowyer !



You can hire these gadgets called fan view which are very handy. You can get all the scores etc, listen to any driver talking to their crew or switch between any of the in car cameras. All pretty neat actually and well worth the hire price.



The mad rush to get cars serviced during a yellow flag -



And then the race off pit road -



Although sometimes they never made it out again - Jeff Burtons car blew an engine -



And Brian Vickers had a coming together with someone that peeled open the whole side of his car -



And the winner on the night, due to a bit of luck and a good strategy call was Regan Smith, first career win and first win for this team. Not a bad one to get at the track "Too Tough to Tame" !



Hope you enjoyed the pics. I had a ball and I'm already of thinking of going back to do a couple more races some day...

AusRam

---------- Post added 03-06-2011 at 04:43 PM ----------

And as a bonus to those of you who read this far. I stayed in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A nice place, but a bit touristy. I did however, find a good shop which I think a lot of you would like. The guys there were pretty cool and let me take some photo's to share. It was called Sports Fanatic.













Luckily they didn't have a whole lot of Rams stuff or I might have spent way more than the couple of hundred I did !!

Cheers...

Thats wicked

Great photos

That fanview ;ooks pretty handy to.

One of my goals is to go to a nascar race. It would be the best thing every. I wont to go to bristol. Thats my favourite track to watch.

loved the picks

as a motor sport fan would love to do that

Thanks guys, glad you liked it. Yeah Kangers, Bristol would be something else...looks like the Roman Colliseum of racing ! Wouldn't mind seeing Talladega or Daytona either...maybe someday...