Of course, the NASCAR shops weren’t the only places that were buzzing during the pre-race festivities. The Corporate Display Area, a ½ mile stretch behind the North Towers, was where race sponsors set up camp. Each company had a huge tent or trailer with a program designed to draw a crowd. The Gillette tent had barber chairs set up and were offering free shaves with their new razor. Fructis, a fruit-based shampoo, had employees washing and styling women’s hair right in the middle of the venue. BF Goodrich let us change tires like a real pit crew, Jack Daniels showed us the distillation process of their whiskey and Home Depot had a craft center set up for kids. The lines for these giveaways often contained 50-100 people at any given time. All this while other companies handed out samples of ice cream, fruit juice and even mayonnaise. It was like Free Trial Day at an enormous grocery store.
Having taken in as much of the atmosphere as we could, my colleague and I made our way inside the track. Curiously, you were allowed to bring your own beer and soft drinks inside the track as long as you carried it or kept it in a small, soft-sided cooler. People were walking through the gates with beer cans strapped across their chests like bandoleers. Coolers that were either too big or had hard sides were abandoned in a huge pile along the gate. We had no coolers, soft or otherwise, so we breezed right to our seats.
The day was overcast and chilly with off and on rain. We hadn’t bothered to bring anything other than t-shirts and jeans, figuring that May 1st in Alabama would be plenty warm. When the people behind us noticed our shivering, they covered us in a big University of Alabama blanket. I thanked them and told them that if they were ever up in Boston, I’d buy them each a bowl of “chowdah.” That got a big laugh and, all of a sudden, we were part of the gang.
As we passed the time through the pre-race ceremonies, our new friends told us how they came to root for certain drivers. Many of them were Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans, having rooted for his father before Dale Sr. was killed in a terrible crash right there at Talladega. Others preferred Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne, and Matt Kenseth, three of the younger guys on the circuit. Still others supported the flashy guys, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart. And, surprisingly, geography had little to do with their loyalty. They didn’t follow a guy because he came from their home state. They cheered for him because they liked his style or the fact that he had a family or that he had to been nice to them when signing an autograph. Indeed, many drivers make themselves available to fans before races for handshakes, t-shirt signings and pictures. Even the most popular drivers. Unlike athletes in other sports, charging fans money for this privilege never even crosses their minds.
Most people, NASCAR fans or not, know that the race begins when the Master of Ceremonies says, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” The MC this day was none other than Will Ferrell, who was there to promote his new (at the time) movie “Talladega Nights, The Legend of Ricky Bobby,” which had been filmed on location. Of course, this movie was to NASCAR what “Anchorman” was to the local news. Commenting on how silly they’d made Ferrell’s character, the woman behind me sighed sadly. “Why do they always have to make fun?” she lamented.
And there it was. There was the reason why people like me couldn’t believe that NASCAR was so popular. It seems as though the runaway #1 sport in America, the sport that fills venues twice as large as the biggest football stadium, the sport with the highest TV ratings, has a bit of an inferiority complex.
The pace car led the other cars around the track as they got up to speed. It takes about two laps for these finely tuned machines to reach full throttle. As they were about to drop the green flag to signal the official start of the race, the gunmetal gray skies opened up. Rain came down in torrents and high winds buffeted the grandstand. The race was stopped as most of the crowd rushed for cover. We made it to our car and found the race broadcast on the radio. The rain let up and eventually stopped, but the track was too wet to continue. The race was postponed until Monday.
Since we had a flight out of Atlanta back to Boston on Sunday night, we navigated our rental car toward the exit. As we headed east toward Georgia on the two-lane highway out of Talladega, we were pleased with all the information we’d gathered and everything we learned. We could now actually speak with some authority on NASCAR, its fans and successful at-track activation for sponsors. The video we shot would make an excellent presentation to both new and existing clients. By any measure, the trip to Alabama had been well worth it.
And yet, we admitted to each other that there was something incomplete, something unfinished about our journey. Simply put, we were disappointed that we didn’t actually see the race.
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—Photo JaseMan/Flickr
This is a awesome website and i really enjoyed coming here and reading your information.I book mark your site so i can get more updates later. Thanks
I’m glad to see what I’ve seen, it’s not a redneck sport, or just cars driving in circles. However, you made one major error, Dale Earnhardt did not die at talladega, he died at Daytona. They are similar tracks, both requiring restrictor plates but any Nascar fan probably could tell you right where they were when he died. Fans and haters alike were saddened. Talladega is probably the one track to see if you’re going to see a Nascar race, you picked the right one.
You’re right about Dale Sr. and Daytona, Ryan. He did, however, have an epic crash at Talladega in ’96 which was probably why I got confused. Again, it was my first experience with NASCAR. But, I’m learning.
I’m from the northwest, and a fan of Nascar, and a liberal, imagine that paradox, so I usually have to explain to people what it is all about. It is fun to watch, but you have to pick, the right races. Talladega usually is the best way to introduce people.