It wasn't until I got a little older that I began to appreciate the sport for what it was.
The 2007 Daytona 500 was the first time I ever felt disappointed after a sporting event. Mark Martin, a 30+ year veteran whose career was defined by "oh, so close" moments, finally had a chance to cement his name as a Daytona 500 champion. With only two laps to go, he had a solid lead over the rest of the field, when younger driver Kevin Harvick emerged from the middle of the pack like a bat out of hell and stole the lead with one lap to go. They would trade the lead (and a good amount of paint) up until the final straightaway, where Harvick edged out the wily veteran and notched another accolade on his career badge.
From 2010 on I maintained a passive love for the sport, only returning to catch the Daytona 500 or an occasional short track race. A couple weeks ago, my dad casually mentioned that a family friend of ours was headed to the Glen for the weekend. My memories of watching NASCAR returned to me, as did my ultimate childhood desire; going to watch a race in person. My interest was piqued, as if no time had passed at all.
Watkins Glen is an oddity in the NASCAR world, in more ways than one. While most NASCAR tracks are nestled in the deep red of the American South, Watkins Glen proudly stakes its claim in the middle of cyan New York State. Most NASCAR tracks host two races a year, while the Glen humbly hosts one. Races tend to be 90 laps instead of the usual 200 or so.
Oh, and it's a road course.
I know what you're thinking: aren't all NASCAR tracks road courses? Well, no. Road courses such as Watkins Glen and Sonoma Raceway in California aren't your typical four left turn affairs; they're more like Mario Kart tracks, only without the turtle shells bouncing off the walls. With several short straightaways, narrow chutes, and hairpin turns, these courses are the ultimate tests for NASCAR drivers. Winners at these tracks deserve their own branch of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
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| A detailed map of the many turns and straightaways at Watkins Glen. |
Here's how the track works; drivers thunder down the front straightaway and take a hard right at "The 90." From here, they swiftly wind through the narrow chute known as "The Esses," where most of the crashes take place, and emerge on another straightaway. After a slight redirection at the Inner Loop, also known as "The Bus Stop," drivers take another sharp right at The Outer Loop and fire on all cylinders down "The Chute." After a couple more turns, the drivers finally return to the start/finish line. As you can probably guess, I friggin' love the names of these turns and straightaways. Every part of the track has a personality.
Though I'd driven to the Finger Lakes on many occasions, I'd never been to Watkins Glen before. It's your typical Finger Lakes cottage village; a collective of quaint farmhouses, outdoor markets, and churches nestled at the base of Seneca Lake. As I drove up the steep leading to the track, I wondered if I was going the right way. I didn't expect the Glen to be in the middle of town, but I at least expected to come across more than a few houses on the way to the track.
As I ascended one of the many knolls on the winding road up, it appeared like a pop-up from a storybook. The lines of cars and its sheer size gave the track the appearance of a shopping mall rather than a racetrack. Once inside the track, I was reminded of the New York State Fair, as I navigated a labyrinth of campers and RVs to my seat behind Pit Lane.
Having watched NASCAR on TV on many occasions, I took the high speeds they traveled for granted. Seeing how fast these cars go in person is something to behold; even behind the pace car, they thundered by at 60+ mph. And the noise...I've been to the front row of rock concerts and been in the engine rooms of nuclear power plants, but I've never heard anything so loud in my life. I must've looked like a normie, plugging my ears while the cars flew by.
Around the fifth lap, the guy next to me tapped my leg and handed me a yellow pair of headphones and a small FanVision display screen. I highly recommend people get these when at the track; it drowns out the deafening roar of the cars, though not enough to take away from the experience, while providing live radio feed from your favorite drivers. I tuned into Kyle Larson's radio, as I'd been a casual fan of him since I began re-following NASCAR in college.
One thing that's new in NASCAR, though I'm not sure if I like it or not, is stage racing. Instead of running one continuous race, races are broken up into three stages that drivers can "win" or finish in the top 10 and earn points towards their season total. Being there live, I found stage racing to be a convenient time to get food and drinks, instead of waiting for a caution flag. On TV, however, I find it tedious and an unnecessary break in the action. In a sports world already overripe with commercials, timeouts, and half-time shows, NASCAR stood out as the only sport that was constant. There were no breaks in NASCAR; just pit stops. Stage racing is the equivalent of the NFL's two-minute warning.
Back to the race.
What I found to be really exhilarating was the athleticism of the pit crews. They looked like track stars and basketball players, not people who crank jacks, fix spoilers, and refuel cars. These people risk their lives too; it takes a special kind of person to run out in front of a line of cars going 50+ miles per hour, knowing there's a good chance you'll get hit. At one point, the crowd gasped as one of the jackmen spiralled in the air after getting hit by his driver. The shock turned to relief and laughter as the guy spread his arms as if to say "safe." If you want to know more about the athletes in the NASCAR pits, check out this great story written by a fellow Champlain grad.
With about 10 laps to go, the herd of contenders had almost completely thinned out. It was now between Martin Truex Jr. and Chase Elliott, the son of Bill Elliott, one of my favorite drivers from my childhood. Elliot has a pretty substantial following, as the boyishly-handsome son of one of NASCAR's most famous drivers, but at that point his popularity hadn't quite translated to on-track success. Despite many top-10 finishes and playoff contention in 2017, Elliott had yet to win a race.
The wily 22-year old had the advantage going into the final laps in his Sun Energy-sponsored Chevy, but Truex Jr, the 2017 NASCAR champion, was right in his rear-view mirror, inching closer and closer with every turn. It was telling when they'd go by us on the front stretch, as Truex Jr. would be closer behind every time around. On top of that, neither driver had hit the pits in a while, meaning both were most certainly running low on fuel.
Watching a race like this would be fun in any medium, but there's something special about watching it all unfold live. At the speeds these drivers go, the margin of error is so little, and every minor skid or quick scrape of the track shoulder would generate a collective gasp from the crowd.
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| Chase and Bill Elliott collectively celebrate the former's first win. |
With only a couple laps remaining, Elliott slowly pulled away from his foe. It looked like he was well on his way to picking up his first career win...until he wheel-hopped into "The 90" on the final lap. This cost him the substantial advantage he'd had, but he managed to stay in front. Meanwhile, Truex Jr's lack of fuel had caught up to him, and what could have been a monumental opportunity was essentially moot. Elliott thundered around the track and picked up his first hard-fought career win to tremendous applause.
His victory lap was short-lived, as he too ran out fuel. That was when his Jimmie Johnson came around. The seven-time NASCAR champion pushed his teammate around the track, all the way to Victory Lane. I found out later that Bill Elliott's first win had also come at a road course, though a significantly more dangerous one.
