Racin’ With the Good Ole Boys

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April 3rd 2011

Published: January 21st 2012

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Roosta

Martinsville Opening Ceremonies

Every race begins with singing the Star Spangled Banner. I took this photo a few minutes before.

Today requires some background.

Immediately after college, I had a housemate who was a motorsports fan.

Every weekend, he was watching either Formula 1 or NASCAR on TV.

At first, I had no idea what the appeal was.

It looked like a bunch of vehicles going around in circles, especially stock cars.

The more we watched, the more interesting it became.

Motorsports has incredible amounts of technology and strategy, and this aspect drew me in.

The occasional spectacular accidents were a bonus.

After three years on the waiting list, my housemate was able to buy tickets to the NASCAR Cup race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

He asked if I wanted to go.

I figured it would be a fun way to pass a day.

Stock car racing in person is very different from seeing it on TV.

Getting to the track is an absolute pain, for one thing.

The police restrict people to certain approach roads, and they become huge parking lots.

The backup started soon after we pulled off the Interstate.

One really learns how well people work together in an environment like this.

Once at the

Martinsville entrance road

The rural road that leads to Martinsville Speedway

track, the experience hit me in a way that didn’t come across in a living room.

It’s incredibly loud; the smell of tires and motor oil is everywhere; and there is more merchandise than a day at the mall.

Nascar fans love to buy memorabilia of their favorite teams, and the teams are more than willing to sell it to them.

The most important aspect, however, is how to watch the race.

On TV, the director decides what to focus on; which stories and teams are the most important at that moment.

At the track from a high seat, spectators have to make those decisions themselves.

The race sounds different as well; nearly every fan rents or brings a scanner that can tune in the team’s radios, along with the officials and even the TV crew.

This adds another dimension to the experience that a TV broadcast simply cannot match.

While I enjoyed the New Hampshire race, it ultimately felt rather bland.

New Hampshire is what I call a corporate track; one that has been designed and engineered within an inch of its life to provide a

Hilly parking lot at Martinsville

The parking lots at Martinsville Speedway. Most speedways are flat as a pancake.

good experience.

While this type of track provides a predictable show, it’s also a rather generic one, for both drivers and fans.

Except for the colorful trees behind the grandstands, I might as well be in Fort Worth or Kansas City.

To get the full experience, I had to see a race at an old Southern speedway, one built in the days when drivers and promoters alike flew by the seat of their pants.

This road trip gave me that chance.

Martinsville Speedway

When Nascar was founded in 1948, races were run on speedways in the rural South.

Most of them were located in some farmer’s field, with rickety grandstands built around a dirt oval.

Concessions consisted of hot dog and burger carts, and the facilities were outhouses.

The drivers showed up in pickup trucks, towing their cars behind them in a trailer.

As Nascar became more popular, things changed.

Promoters built superspeedways, enormous tracks allowing very high speeds.

Daytona is the most famous.

As the newer tracks became more professional, with all the amenities of any major sports venue, the old speedways disappeared.

They went bankrupt and

Martinsville frontstretch

The frontstretch at Martinsville Speedway. Yes, this is all of it :)

closed, lost race dates after poor ticket sales, or were even bought and closed to free up their race dates (North Wilkesboro Speedway is the most infamous example).

These days, only one track from the inaugural season is still on the schedule, Martinsville Virginia.

One realizes that Martinsville is different long before reaching the track.

It’s nowhere near an Interstate, for starters.

The road to the town is a four lane local road through rolling hills.

It goes constantly up and down.

No modern highway would be built with gradients like this.

As I drew nearer to the track, more cars showed up on the road, heading the same place I was.

We were now a pilgrimage, all heading to the same place of bliss.

Unbelievably, the highway moved fairly well.

Martinsville Speedway itself is located on the edge of town.

The story goes that the track’s founder H. Clay Earles climbed a hill near a railroad track, saw a spot he thought was perfect for a race track, and built one.

The railroad is still active, and trains rumble by on occasion during races.

The track itself is

Martinsville Start Finish Line

The start finish line, ground zero for race fans

located along a narrow rural road, with houses and farms running right up to the entrance (which the TV broadcasters love showing, for some reason).

No modern track builder would consider a site like this.

That rural road makes the final stretch of getting into Martinsville a real pain.

Deep research really pays off here.

The official website lists the preferred routes for getting to the road.

Fan sites (No link; do your own research!) reveal which routes have the cleanest drive.

It turns out that there is a route that is less well known that usually has little problems.

It’s worth driving out of the way to ensure that one is on the correct highway, going in the correct direction, to use it.

It was certainly worth it for me.

I got in about twenty minutes, a quarter of the time it took to get to New Hampshire (near the first turn is the most obvious highway sign on race day: “Warning: stopped traffic ahead”)

Things get even better.

The site of the track is really hilly.

Modern track sites are

Jeff Burton's Race Car

A few cars were on the track during the track walk. This one belongs to Jeff Burton.

flat as a pancake, to aid with acres of parking and camping spots.

Martinsville visitors, by contract, are forced to park in fields on the hills.

The view was rather pretty.

For me, this added to the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere.

The track itself is the next clue that things are really different.

It’s very short, for one thing, a mere half mile.

There are only three tracks on the current schedule less than a mile long.

It also has an unusual layout.

It has two straight sections linked by the tightest U-turns of any Nascar track.

Many commentators call it a paperclip.

Drivers need high levels of skill to do well here, because they need to accelerate though the straight sections and then brake hard to get through the turns.

Doing so without wearing out the car and breaking something is difficult indeed.

The grandstands for this track are relatively small as well, with almost no luxury suites.

Thanks to the railroad, there are none on the back side.

A modern track has seating everywhere it will fit,

Martinsville Speed Hot Dogs

The famous Martinsville Speed Hot Dogs, before toppings.

and some seats are so high spectators risk nosebleeds.

Finally, there are the concessions.

They are rather primitive by modern standards, and there aren’t many of them.

The track is famous for its speedway hot dogs, hotdogs covered in all sorts of toppings.

They sell tens of thousands of them.

The final, and most important, difference is the people who go there.

A place this primitive and historic attracts people who love the sport and repels those who don’t, and it shows.

Everyone, from the people in the stands to the parking lot attendants to the concession workers loves stock car racing, knows its history, and loves to talk about it.

Once a new fan shows they are one of them (and can tolerate some Southern jingoism), they are the friendliest people in the world.

To show how important history is to this fan base, Richard Petty still does the race promotion (if one have to ask who Richard Petty is, they should buy tickets to a corporate track).

All of this makes Martinsville the Fenway Park of Nascar Cup races, the place where the experience is distilled to its purest state.

Driver Introductions

Every driver gets a lap around the track in a pickup truck before the race starts. This is eventual race winner Kevin Harvick

How could I go anywhere else?

The day was a blast from start to finish.

If one arrives early, which I did, they can pay $10 to walk around on the track surface.

What struck me seeing it from the driver’s viewpoint is just how small the place really is.

They barely have time to accelerate before its time to brake and turn.

The stands are really steeply banked seen from the racing surface, creating something of a bowl (this effect is even more pronounced at other tracks).

People spent the most attention at the start/finish line, which is right in the middle of the track.

For race fans, this is sacred ground.

Martinsville Racing

Once the race started, it proceeded in classic Martinsville style.

Which is to say, long open runs interrupted by busts of minor accidents.

Within 20 laps of starting open racing, the track produces the link belt effect.

Cars are strung out along the entire length of the track, so drivers are now either passing someone or being passed constantly.

This is one of the things that makes

Opening Lap

First lap of open racing. Every car is packed together

short track racing very different to a superspeedway.

With all the passing, collisions are inevitable.

One will eventually spin a driver into the safety barriers along the wall.

It’s also very likely with all that breaking that tires will overheat and blow out.

When either happens, the race is slowed down so the debris can be cleaned up.

These are called ‘caution laps’.

Fans like them because it means they can run to the rest room without missing anything.

At the end of the cleanup, the race restarts.

Cars all restart packed together.

With lots of cars in a small area, more collisions usually happen quickly.

At Martinsville, cautions are quickly followed by more cautions, until drivers learn to settle down and wait before pushing things again.

Caution laps serve a purpose for the teams as well.

Cars need service during the race, mostly to replace tires and reload fuel.

Wise crew chiefs track how the car performs, and then adjusts it during the service as the race proceeds.

Since the pace under caution is much slower than the pace of an open race,

Pit Stop

One of many pit stops during the race. This is Pablo Montoya

one will lose much less position servicing the car under caution laps.

It’s very common for the entire field to come in for service during a caution, which commentator (and former champion driver) Darrel Waltrip calls the “feeding frenzy”.

Listening to a driver radio is much fun during these periods, as they discuss car performance and how they want it changed.

My seat had a perfect view of three pits.

Watching teams change tires became routine pretty quickly, but there were more interesting things.

The most dramatic is the quick repair of damage, often done with a sledgehammer, sawzall, and duct tape!

The Big Crash

The race had two really dramatic moments, one very good and one less so.

The less so one is when a driver got their throttle stuck.

The car accelerates uncontrollably until it hits something.

In this case, that something was another car.

Both of them spun, slammed hard into the safety barriers, and caught fire.

Race cars at this point have layers of safety measures, so the fires went out quickly.

One driver climbed out of their wreck

Crash Aftermath

Aftermath of a crash violent enough to rip out part of the safety barrier.

of a car and immediately ran over to check that the other was fine.

Both drivers walked away from the crash.

Their machines were taken out on flatbeds.

The impact was so severe that it actually ripped out part of the wall.

The race was stopped completely (a red flag) while a new piece of safety foam was welded in its place.

Darrel Waltrip called this period the ‘half time break’.

Watch it here:

Final Shootout

The good dramatic moment was the end.

A late caution caused a restart with every car close together.

This situation is called a shootout.

A tight, dramatic battle then ensured between three separate cars.

One of them, Dale Earnhardt Jr., is a huge favorite of many fans, and another one, Kyle Busch, is hated by many of the fans present.

People screamed and waved as the cars went past.

At the end, the third driver, Kevin Harvick, won but it was very close.

Martinsville at its best produces finishes like this one.

Watch the

Feeding frenzy!

Busy pit stop during the race

finish here:

The track holds a very similiar race in the fall. Here's the full broadcast!

After the race was over, I knew I would not be driving anywhere for a while (that rural road, remember?)

I spent some of the time in the stands, discussing the race and Nascar in general with the people around me.

We were all rather disappointed in the outcome.

I then went back to my car, where the people next door saw what I was wearing (a driver T-shirt) and invited me to their barbeque.

We spent yet more time talking about the race, and how much we love Martinsville.

What a great day.

For dinner this night, I knew I wanted another round of Southern chain road food.

I found it at a restaurant called Western Sizzlin’.

They specialize in steak.

This steak is about as far from an expense account steakhouse as it gets.

While the quality was no better than a backyard cookout, it was well marinated, cooked to perfection, and priced right.

They even had all

Shootout!

Dale Earnhart Jr. (on left) races Kyle Busch (center) and Kevin Harvick (off to left) for the win

you can eat desserts!

I was far from the only one there who had obviously been at the race earlier.

The race was exhausting.

I knew ahead of time I wanted to spend some time as far from civilization as I could afterward.

I found what I needed at a Bed and Breakfast called Fall Creek Farm.

It’s an actual goat farm located a good drive from the nearest town.

The lodging is in old tobacco sheds that have been turned into rustic cabins.

They do have heat, hot water, and electricity.

This place is so remote that there is neither cell phone nor internet service.

The owners are really nice as well; they volunteered to do my laundry so I wouldn’t need to spend a day in town dealing with it.

To top it off, the rate was less than what the cheapest hotel in Martinsville was asking for.

Additional photos below

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