The LazyAssGeek’s

The folks at Lance Co were kind enough to host us at the race in Dover, DE yesterday.  The owner of Haas Automation (we own 18 of their machines with 3 more on the way) owns the 66 & 70 cars that run in the Sprint Cup series so Lance decided to host a Skybox event with support from the team. The president of Lance, Ed, had invited us to a couple of races previously, but we weren’t able to overcome our dread of the traffic for that race and hadn’t previously attended.  Well the traffic did live down to its billing but we still had a great day.

The day started very early as we had to pick up our customer at the hotel @ 6:00am in Plymouth Meeting.  We got to within 1.5 miles of the exit to the track on DE Route 1 in about an hour, and then it took another hour to get into the track and get parked.  Ed had generously included a parking pass for the Skybox lot, so we were right up by the track. He had recommended getting there early because of that traffic, and it was good advice.  We arrived just after 8 and they didn’t open the gate for the Skyboxes until just before 9, but then we were able to take the elevator up and get some coffee and get registered.

We were included in the first two groups for the pit tour and it was definitely the highlight of the day.  Our group had a gentleman named Carey from the team show us around.  What a madhouse it is down there, and I’m sure it’s worse at Dover than a lot of other places.  The infield is shoe-horned inside the horse track and there’s not a lot of space.  You really have to keep your head on a swivel as the teams are pushing the cars around to the inspection points getting ready for the race. We talked a bit with a couple of crewman and got a tour through the hauler.  The inventory they have of spare parts, all the computers, etc is pretty damned amazing.

After the tour we headed back up to the Skybox and had a couple of hours to kill before the race.  They fed us a nice lunch and a few beers and Combos helped kill the time. Combos had given a truckload of snack packs to the track for the suites as part of a promo with eventual race winner Kyle Busch’s car.  We were joking around about having lots of space in Joe’s truck for it and the guy from catering that was in the suite at the time while on the phone to the kitchen to order more food trays says “suite 322 loves the Combos, bring lots of Combos.”  We were soon awash in Combos… managed to leave with only 4 packs despite their best efforts.

The race got under way and by lap 18 it was over for lots of folks, including my guy Tony Stewart, Joe’s guy Bobby Labonte and Haas driver Scott Riggs. Elliott Sadler tried to turn under a car in front of him before he cleared David Gilliland behind him and got spun into the wall – the freight train was coming and it turned into a mess.

It was impossible to see who was in that mess from our seats so when Riggs brought his wreck of a car down pit road there was an audible sigh in the booth.  His eventual finish combined with the 150 point penalty from Charlotte knocked them just outside the top 35 in owner’s points.  Good new for them is that the guy in 35th is Michael Waltrip!  But Riggs will have to qualify on time for Pocono, best of luck to the Haas team with Riggs and Lefler getting into the show.

Took them a while to clean that mess up, and then it was a caution-fest for the next 30 laps with debris and spins.  From there on out though it became the strung-out parade so many Dover races become, winding up with only 6 cars on the lead lap. Fans want to blame the new car because it’s easy, and lord knows the car hasn’t lived up to what NASCAR wanted out of it aero-wise, but the reality is it’s not the car, it’s the speed.  Nobody wants to hear that though because the automatic though is faster is better. Speed may be cool to see, but racing is better to watch.  They have to figure out some way to slow the cars down.  The slower they go, the less reliant they are on air to hold them to the track, the more passing you’ll get.

Once Kyle Busch was finished destroying the field and the burnouts had begun, we headed for the car. We were strapped in at 6:04… and on Route 1 at 7:40.  Absolutely brutal! With just some basic planning they could make it so much better.  There is practically nothing in the way of traffic management once you’re away from the track.  They force you to head South on 13, they block off the entrance to 1 from 8 and then they abandon the traffic to the mercy of the standard traffic lights.  If you just blocked off the side streets for an hour after the race, opened up all the lanes and set the lights to blink to get cars to the split where 1 & 13 come together down by Dover AFB you could move a lot of people out of there in a hurry.  Indianapolis simply cannot be matched.  They move 350,000 people out of the track area in a couple of hours, Dover can’t manage 100,000.  I’m sure there’s a knot of politics and infighting over who’s responsible and who has to pay, but I’d bet a lot of those empty seats we saw at the track had as much to do with the traffic as they do with the $4/gallon gas that everybody wants to blame. /rant

Thanks to Ed and all the folks at Lance for inviting and taking such good care of us.  Also thanks to Carey and the completely adorable Mariah (Yes, Mariah and Carey) for coordinating everything for us at the track.  Carey if you’re right and the 20 hat I was wearing would be supporting a Haas team next year, well maybe you’ll see us next year.  Otherwise, sorry Ed, even though we had a fun day, that traffic combined with a lousy race will keep us away.