Howdy! Hive friends 👋 How’s your March going so far? If you gotta ask me, it’s quite eventful. Hence, the reason I’m back is to share to you another fun experience that I just had.
Arizona has its own way of taking big events in the field of sports. We’ve been able to watch NBA basketball games before. Yet, Little did I know, NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) is one of it. I knew about the car racing competitions from television and from the famous CARS cartoon movie but didn’t expect I’ll get to experience it in its real track.
Last Saturday, March 9, 2024, we headed out at around 2 pm going to the venue. I must admit it kinda scared me as this event was held in an isolated area with the same vibes of the wrong turn movie.😑 Hazel (my co-teacher/housemate/) and I went on and found how struggling it was. We located the parking area yet we had to ride the tram going to the racing track.
As you can see, the tram takes a lot of passengers to and from the race way. The ride is a bit slow but the view makes up for it.
After a 10-minute ride, we had to walk for 3 minutes going to the entrace after we presented our tickets, checked our bags and ourselves for possible weapons brought. Yes, weapons. Here, it is legal to bring weapons such as fire arms for self protection. This made me felt relieved and secured against mass shooting as it has been rampant here in the US.
I always pay attention to the bulletin boards and be informed of the event’s policy.
We walked upstairs and found our row seats. And voila, my eardrums are about to shatter within seconds of hearing the very loud noise coming from the racing cars. Luckily, I picked up ky earphones from the table as if it called for me before leaving the house. It saved my day and literally my ears. 😅 As I’ve looked around, everyone has headphones. Others opted to rent the event’s headphones as you may be able to hear the announcer. As we settled in our seats, I observed the place , we were watching like a playoffs game so expectedly not that much of people watched it and there are a lot of empty rows of seats. By the way, we were seated on an upped block which I though is far from the race track but I was wrong. It was quite near that I can clearly see the cars.
These pictures are snippets of the race.
The race went on and the stage 2 endend. I admit , I did not know the flow of the competition but I just looked at the high rise score board which showed the cars ranking and the remaining laps out of 200.
Here comes the last stage and the very few lapses left when there was a multi-car crash. 1 car started the collision that affect 2 more. However, I think only 2 cars were badly damaged and were pulled out from the race track. I thought, that was it and game must go on, but I was wrong. There were several vacuum trucks and sweeper trucks went on cleaning the entire raceway. People were also picking up debris. It took at least 20 minutes before the game resumed. When they resumed, cars lined up according to the recent ranking as they followed the lead car with blinking lights. Moreover, it was quite fascinating to see the actual process of changing the tires in their pit stops. Afterwards, they resumed to finished the game.
Here, you can see both the actual retrieval of the damaged car as well as the cleaning up of the race track before he race resumed.
Everyone already expected the leading number 7 car as the second in rank was way behind him. To everyone’s surprise, his tires suddenly smoked , his car starts to wiggle and later on bumped into the wall. There were less than 5 laps left. He hit his car so bad that he couldn’t go back to the race. We saw his disappointment as he slammed his car’s door so hard that it broke and fell on the ground. He also expressed his personal grievances and disappointment both to himself and to his team who worked so hard yet he failed them. Though, he assured them to be even better for the next race. The race track was then again cleaned up and had to call overtime race.
This was the driver of car number 7 who vocally expressed his dismay on the bery unexpectd turn out of the competition.
Because of the second accident, it was decided to have an overtime race.
It was a nonstop two minute race and who ever aces it, will be the winner. As expected, the second in rank, the number 81 car won the race. To pay tribute to the audience, the winner displayed tire burnout that made a huge smoke as he presented himself to the audience.
This shows the last line up of cars as they finish the 2-lap overtime race. You can see some of the fans who stand up to cheer for their bets.
With such experience, I realize that life is indeed unpredictable. Nobody can be so sure of what’s gonna happen next as anything can possibly happen. Only God knows. I strongly believe that His plans are always the best for us. Who would have thought that a simple old tire replacement would take away the chance of a better ranking for the championship race.
May this blog worthy of your time. Thanks for dropping by.
‘Till next time! ☺️
