The Subway 400 at Rockingham

At shortly after 7:00 AM Rick’s rented mini-van pulls up.  Alex, age 7, and Peter, age 5, are packed in the rear, Rick’s wife Suzie is in the middle seat.  Irene climbs in with Suzie and I take the navigator’s seat as we head out for our first experience at a NASCAR race.  I’ve watched NASCAR on TV, of course, but never been to a race track since, with two friends, I attended the 1960 Indianapolis 500, an event which proved to be vastly unsatisfying.  We head up highway 22, the new alternate route out of Myrtle Beach and US 501.  The sky is filled with clouds, bright blue breaking through.  The van is buffeted by the winds gusting to around 40 MPH.  It is cold and blustery as yesterday’s rain and last night’s thunder storms and rain are blown out to sea. 

We pull into Sparky’s for breakfast.  Some might call Sparky’s a tourist trap; to me it’s prime Americana.   FIREWORKS! SOUVENIRS! PANCAKES! What more could anyone want?  We walk into the diner portion where several banquette style, leatherette upholstered seats stand in the middle of the dining room beside some round oak tables.  A rear projection TV dominates the room.  Reaching away from us are room after room of cheap souvenirs.  Cowboy hats, flags and banners, seashells, peanuts in almost all forms, pecans, key holders, ash trays, boots, belts, ice cream, soda, t- shirts, sweat shirts, and more.  In a separate building are the fireworks.  The breakfast offers pure southern fare.  Pancakes for Peter and Rick, Eggs and a biscuit for Suzie and Alex, a sausage biscuit for Irene, and a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit for me.  The country ham is better than anything McDonalds can even imagine and the biscuit is just right.  Why would anyone stop at either Cracker Barrel or one of the fast food places when they could soak up such quality and variety?

We stop at Flying J for gasoline.  The wind blows so hard my cap takes off and scuttles across the parking lot.  I run it down and clap it back on my head.  Fed and watered we continue towards Rockingham, it’s about 9:00 AM and race starts at 1:00 this afternoon.  We expect to pick up race traffic some miles from the track and to take an hour or more to find our way into the parking lot.  We drive through the center of Bennettsville, the county seat of Monroe County, sadly run down with shuttered store fronts and urban renewal projects ongoing.  We cross the border into the aptly named Hamlet, NC, a few miles from the track and the traffic slows to a crawl.  We think we will maintain this pace all the way from here, but discover only a traffic signal and a brace of police cars slowing the traffic, which picks up as we leave town.  Soon we slow again as we site the Rockingham Race Track’s back stretch grandstand.  Tents stretch across a camping area where bundled up campers prepare to move over to the track.  Behind the tent area stand rank after rank of RV’s parked for the races.   We are directed onto a huge grass parking lot and before we know it, we’re there, perhaps an hour or two before we figured to arrive.

I had expressed some concern about not having enough to do at the track if we arrived too soon before the race began.  Nothing in the material on Rockingham I had found on the Internet even suggested activities for race goers.  Not to worry.  As we walk toward the track, I can see dozen of huge, brightly painted trailers drawn up in a double circle like Conestoga wagons circled for perimeter defense.  This circle, however, is designed to capture fans and funnel them into the maw of a commercial feeding frenzy.  The trailers match the color schemes of the team’s and driver’s cars.  Each team has one or more drivers, at least one often a star of the NASCAR circuit.  The trailers open huge doors to display a range of race memorabilia; souvenir is too prosaic a word.  Model cars, numbered shirts, hats, jackets, beach towels, fleece blankets, radio scanners to allow participants to listen in on the chatter between the pits and the drivers, beer can holders, coffee mugs, key chains and medallions, videos, and more.  A truck with a huge awning in front of it blares out, “Sign up and get a free….” 

The sound of motors revving fills the air.  Race cars looking ready and menacing sit in front of some trailers.  Connoisseurs look knowingly at the roll frames, the carefully constructed webs of seat restraints, the helmets sitting on the seat back ready for a driver, the suspension and exhaust system.  Kids pose in front of the cars of their favorite drivers.  These vehicles may look like  Tauruses, Monte Carlos, Grand Prixs, and (Dodge) Intrepids  but they are completely constructed in the team shops or by chassis specialists.  The headlights are actually decals stuck on the front.  No such thing as a turn signal, a horn, or a bumper mars the perfection of these race machines.  Ford, Chevy, and Dodge each have corporate trailers.  The US Army recruits, giving away web key holders for fans to put around their necks.  I get four, for the kids, Irene, and me.  I price a scanner, but $35.00 rental seems a lot for the race.  I will regret this later. 

The crowd appears pretty much as I had imagined them, but more colorful in more than one way.  First, I had thought the crowd would be lily white.  Instead, there is a sprinkling of black faces among this largely white country crowd.  This part of southern North Carolina, a few miles north of the South Carolina border has a large black population, perhaps approaching a majority.  Even so, the crowd appears to be white and mostly working class.  Second, the colors are bright and race oriented.  Fans where team and driver jackets reflecting their favorites.  Alex loves the much hated and too maligned Jeff Gordon.  Peter has somehow decided he like Tony Stewart, another star.  A large crowd is lined up in front of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s bright red Budweiser trailer.  His number 8 car is a favorite of fans, if not of handicappers.  He is much beloved because of his father, killed two years ago in a track collision when he hit the wall and died of injuries no one who saw the accident thought could be so serious.  Trailers representing less popular sponsors or rookie drivers have almost no one in front of them.  It’s a festive crowd, wandering cheerfully around as the fans await the race.  Despite the cold, some people walk around in tee shirts, a cold beer clasped in their fists.  Others are bundled up against the chilly wind.  I’m surprised at how few food vendors there are on the grounds.  You’d think there would be good money to be made selling funnel cakes, Italian sausage sandwiches, cotton candy, corn dogs, and all the other stuff usually found on a midway.

As noon approaches, we wend our way towards the gate which will lead us to our seats in section seven.  Entering a stadium for any sport is much like coming into a great cathedral.  I walk through the gate (and these days are inspected by the security staff), wander along with the crowd, and squeeze down a tunnel which opens onto the panorama of the track.  Before me I see the paved, irregularly shaped oval surrounded by stands for the spectators.  The brightly colored race cars are being rolled from the garage area behind the pits into a row waiting for the start.  The track infield is filled with dozens of high end motor homes, the vehicles of drivers and teams.  Rockingham is too small a track to permit infield parking for the fans’ rigs.  The jovial crowd is slowly filtering into the track and finding their seats.  The grandstand itself is aluminum seats with backs.  We are eight rows up and can see all of the track except for a section of the back straight, where much of  the action will happen this afternoon.  A large tractor-trailer with a stage on it is parked on the track a little to our left, just in front of the start/finish line. 

As one o’clock approaches a band appears on the verge of the track.  This race is sponsored by Subway, the sandwich makers, so Clay Henry, the fireman who lost 130 pounds eating only Subway sandwiches is introduced and gives a brief speech.  The 43 drivers who will be driving the race are each introduced in reverse order of their starting position.  Some are greeted with great cheers from the crowd, others with hoots and good natured boos.  As each driver leaves the stage, he signs a helmet held by someone at the foot of the stairs and steps into the bed of a Chevy pick-up truck to be given a ride around the track so fans can see him. Once in his car, each driver will essentially be invisible, a flash of helmet, perhaps, nothing more.  On completing their circuit of the track, the drivers move to their cars, enter through the windows, and settle down.  The band plays a raggedy National Anthem.  Soon the words made famous at the Indianapolis track by Wilber Shaw.  Now it starts all big races. “Gentlemen, start your engines!”

A wall of rough, throaty sound rolls across the track.  Slowly, at first, the snake of cars moves down the pit alley and enters the main track at the second turn, across the track from us.  The drivers place their cars two by two, led by the Pontiac pace car.  The gradually increase speed as they take another lap around the mile-long track.  The starter waves a yellow flag and holds up one finger.  One more pace lap to go.  As the line of cars heads out of turn four again, the pace car veers left and into the pit area.  The starter holds out the folded green flag, then lets it unfurl, and waves it vigorously in the air.  Suddenly the roar increases to an inferno of sound as the cars accelerate past us, reaching toward 165 miles per hour.  The race is on.

The forty-three cars seem to nearly fill the track.  As the number two car maintains a slight lead, the roaring cars flash past, indistinguishable to my untrained eye.  I put a stop watch on the lead car.  It takes about 25 seconds for it to complete a lap.  No sooner is the last car past than I can look up to see the lead car approaching, followed by two or three others in close pursuit.  A look at a scoreboard located between turns three and four gives the numbers of the top five cars.  I look at the program to identify the names of the drivers, but keeping them straight is difficult as the colors are unfamiliar and the numbers whiz past so fast I can’t pick them up.  The noise cascades around me, a physical presence.  Even using ear plugs hardly dampens this deafening sound.  Without ear plugs I would be putting my hearing in jeopardy.

About 45 laps into the race we see a puff of white smoke on the far side of the track.  A few seconds later Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s car limps into the pits.  Seconds later, the yellow flag is waving, the cars lined up, and the cars in the lead lap move quickly into the pits for tires and fuel.  It takes about twelve seconds for each car to be serviced and to return to the road.  So many cars pitting at once leads to many near collisions in the pit area, but apparently the cars escape unscathed.  Jr. Earnhardt, after a change of tires comes quickly out of the pits, but returns after one lap.  A lap later he returns again.  This is all a mystery to me.  Soon there’s another puff of smoke and the 23 car limps into the pits, its right front fender smashed.  The pit crew works to pull it away from the wheel well and get the car back on the track.  Twenty-three will finish the race, as banged up as it is.

The race settles into a pattern.  Cars race under the green for thirty or forty laps, then something happens on the track, and the yellow caution flag stops the racing, the pace car comes out, and the cars regroup.  First the cars on the lead lap pit for fuel and tires, then the next group.  The caution continues for several minutes as the cars regroup and draw into line, all cars assuming their rightful positions in the race before the green waves again and racing resumes.  The importance of the yellow flag cannot be overestimated.  Without periodic pauses in racing under the yellow, the race would become impossible to follow.  The leaders would become so caught in traffic they would become invisible to even the most sophisticated spectators.  The caution flag allows everyone to get sorted out before racing begins again.  When the green waves once more, the roar increases and racing continues.  The people in the stands settle into a period of watchful waiting and heavy duty beer consumption.  People wander the aisles, visit the rest room, eat hot dogs and hamburgers, and visit in the stands.  The race goes on.

As the race comes down to the last twenty or so laps, the tension and interest increase again.  The lead changes hands several times.  There has not been a caution flag for some miles.  The issue of when to pit, whether drivers can finish on their current tires and fuel load, and what strategy is most likely to work becomes the topic of conversation.  With less than ten miles to go, one of the leaders must stop for fuel, taking himself out of the race.  Slowly, Dale Jarret, driving the US Postal Service car, has been moving up towards the lead.  On the next to last lap he surges into the lead, which he holds to the checkered flag, weaving through traffic and using lagging cars from the pack to help shield him from attack.  He takes the checkered flag, runs one more lap as other drivers pull into the pit and cruises past the main straight.  He makes a U turn and returns past the straight, waving to the crowd before he pulls into pit row and heads for victory lane.  The tired and happy crowd cheers his popular victory, and heads for the exits.  We walk around the outside of the track, find our rented van, and head back to Myrtle Beach.  All in all, it’s been an interesting and satisfying day.  I don’t think NASCAR racing will become a major staple in my use of entertainment dollars.