Sunday, April 01, 2007

GTR 'GTR'



Today, I’m praying for rain. It’s currently 8:37 on Sunday morning. The ground is wet and there’s a thick layer of clouds keeping the sun from shining. There’s a 40% chance of rain with scattered showers. And that includes the Martinsville, Virginia area.

The Goody’s 500 could be rained out today. And that would mean they would try to start the race tomorrow morning.

I REALLY wanted to go to this particular race because it will be a historic event in the world of NASCAR. It will be the first time that the “Car Of Tomorrow” races at Martinsville, one of the oldest and shortest tracks currently on the circuit.

I just want to be there and able to say that I saw the first COT race at Martinsville. And the second COT race in NASCAR’s history.

I’ve been at a couple of historic NASCAR events… I was at Jeff Gordon and Bobby Labonte’s first wins. I got to see Richard Petty race in his final season of competition at a short track that was phased out of the NASCAR schedule a long time ago… North Wilkesboro. I was also at the first night race at the Lowes Motor Speedway in Charlotte. Hell, I was even at a race where Dick Trickle (my fave at the time) finished in the top 10.

My friend Wally Harrison took me to my first race at N. Wilkesboro where the late Davey Allison won. And the last race I attended was at Martinsville where Dale Earnhardt won and later that day, we literally ran into him as he made his way to the media center.

I went with Sean Whitley and Marie, a girl I was seeing at the time. She was an Earnhardt fan and was pleased with the day’s race winner. We waited for the crowd to clear out, because you should never be in a hurry to leave a NASCAR race. There’s just no point. We took our time and finished all of our beer. We waited until the buzz wore off and headed for the parking lot.

We made our way around the concourse with various folks still wandering around. As we made our way around turns 1 and 2, there was a rush of people that came right at us. I mean right at us! Zombie movies don’t really prepare you for such things, but we feared for the worst. But they weren’t trying to eat our flesh, they pushed us aside.

Sean and I looked to our left, noticed that Dale Earnhardt was standing right beside us… We collectively said with no emotion whatsoever, “Oh.”

We didn’t like Dale Earnhardt and we didn’t care about meeting him, so we shuffled our sorry asses away from the mob. Then we saw the other driver that accompanied Mr. Earnhardt to the media center… We both pointed at him and shouted, “HEY! IT’S MIKE WALLACE!”

We were the only two people that stopped him in order to meet him. He was kind enough to chat with us for more than a few seconds before going inside.

I had lost Marie in the mad dash of the crowd. I didn’t see her until the flash flood of people dissipated and then we left.

I hope my prayers for a washout at Martinsville pay off for me. I sincerely hate that some folks won’t get to see the race because they have to work on Monday. I’ve been in those shoes at Darlington where we left thinking it was rained out (I was outvoted). We got to Seagrove when the green flag flew and we watched the rest of the race at Wally’s.

If it’s rained out today and you wanna go… Drop me an email and we’ll hook up on Monday… eugenebsims@yahoo.com

And BTW, it's the first of the month and my MySpace picture has been changed! Check it out!

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:58 AM

    Okay, There is a sore spot in my crawl about this whole "Car Of Tomorrow" thing. I do believe that Preston Tucker coined that phrase way back in 1948 when he came out with the Tucker. Every time I hear Nascar say that..it just makes me want to scream. I am a hugh fan of the movie Tucker (in fact it's my favorite movie). I do believe that Preston Tucker was ahead of this time. Maybe had he not been ran out of the auto business we would have already seen this Nascar of tomorrow.

    Pamela

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  2. Keep in mind that it's really not a "car" per se with NASCAR.... It's a built from the ground-up race car version of the street-stock car model.

    Years ago, NASCAR stopped using cars off the showroom floors and required teams to build cars to represent those models for safety reasons.

    Tucker did in fact change the auto industry... And who knows... Perhaps some NASCAR safety features are directly influenced by Tucker's one "Car Of Tomorrow"?

    In essence... NASCAR is NOT ripping off Tucker or Tucker's "Car Of Tomorrow"... They are only using the phrase... As have all the ones before Preston Tucker.

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  3. Anonymous6:12 PM

    Sorry you couldn't make Martinsville to cuddle the Car of Tomorrow.

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  4. Anonymous1:44 AM

    Forget NASCAR and gimmie formula one! Now THAT is a great sport! :P lol

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  5. Alana,

    The majority of Americans can't get behind F-1 or Indy type of race cars... Because they don't look like cars!

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  6. Anonymous12:20 PM

    Dear people,


    I have a sore spot in my crawl as well, and his name is Jimmie Johnson. Oh, how I loathe thee!!!!

    Also, to out readers across the pond, NASCAR has swayed the attention of one of the greatest F-1 drivers in history, one Juan Pablo Montoya. Also, lesser named guys in the Indy Car circuit have made the jump to stock car racing as well.

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  7. Anonymous1:32 PM

    Ok so a dude from formula one likes it... woohooo lol. It just doesn't float my boat which is cool because the world would be very boring if we all liked the same things, don't you think?!

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