Lars/Tstran Winston Weekend Report

[Lars]

Friday morning we awoke to a beautiful Charlotte morning. It was sunny and was going to get up to 86 degrees. We made our way up to Hendrick Motorsports; driving by Lowe's Motorspeedway (Kewl!!!) on the way. Shortie (Kayla) had to see the Wonder Boy's shop. Lol. Started at the museum. They had a lot on display including one of the last remaining 'Days of Thunder' cars, Jeff's 1st Brickyard win car, one of Tim Richmond's cars & a tore up Kenny Schrader's car. I believe it was a Talladega car...didn't have a chance to read it because I had to take a picture of every Winston Cup trophy for Shortie. They had a large viewing window of the #25 team's assembly area.

Made our way up to Jeff's shop. Like the museum, they had a lot of trophies on display (But no trophy wife...*G*). But all we could see of the #24 & #48 shops was a view of the front ends of their cars from 100 feet away through a hockey rink. Even with the 85:1 zoom on our camera, we couldn't see much. We didn't stop by the chassis shop at Hendrick, not sure what we would have been able to see there.

Next we went to Roush Racing. Not as fancy as Hendrick, but nice. Had good viewing windows for all the teams assembly areas & of course I took lots of pictures of Matt's shop!!!

Then we made our way up to the Taj Mahal (DEI). No viewing areas & it was mostly a tribute to himself & Dale Jr. But they did have a nice display of Mikie's 500 win including the trophy. Also could view a room though a window of some of their winning cars including Mikie's 500 car. My kids were impressed with the trailer they had parked outside with the bathrooms inside. Marble floors in there too & fancy. Had pictures on the wall of the offices & the hallways & meeting rooms...WOW!!! Nice to see what $$$ can buy.

Then it was on to LMS to watch practice & qualifying for the Winston. We sat right by the start/finish line and had a great view of all the pit stops. When Matt's team pulled off the best pit stop, I knew he had a shot at the pole. When I saw the #17 flash up in the number 1 position, beating out Mikie, I jumped out of my chair screaming!!!

On Saturday afternoon we made our way to the track. It was cloudy and cool & had rained all morning. Shortie & I started walking around to check out all the drivers signing autographs. We saw Bobby LaBonte, Ryan Newman & Kurt Busch. We needed to get there early to get autograph tickets, but I was able to get pictures of them. Then we got in line for Ricky Craven & he pulled Shortie up on the counter and I got a picture of them together. That was Kewl! We also saw Harry Gant there & got his autograph & Steve Grissom’s too. When we made our way up to our seats we could feel it was going to be a cold one. Sat in the tower above across from the last two pit stalls @ the exit of pit road. We had our coats and long pants, but we still ended up buying long shirts to wear because it was COLD! Lol. We saw some great racing and I could tell Jeremy Mayfield was going to run away with the Open. In the Winston Jimmie Johnson had the car to beat…obviously. Too bad everyone knew that the entire 10-car field was going to be inverted for the final segment. And was Elliott Sadler mad at Ryan or what? Lol. I thought Sterling should have been the one whacking helmets off of cars. Besides Sterling, the wreck that Ward caused took out DJ & Rusty and one other driver…can’t remember whom until I watch the tape. When Ryan got ahead of Tony during the final segment, no one was going to catch him. Then caution came out with 5 laps to go. I personally was hoping that Kurt would get by Ryan. Not a fan of Ryan’s & didn’t want to see Tony win either. But Ryan was way to strong except for Dale Jr., who came out of nowhere. Dale tried getting Ryan loose a few times but Ryan was able to save it and win. I was happy Matt made it to the final segment, but knew he didn’t have the ponies to get Ryan.

Sunday was a sunny, but crisp morning, but it warmed up nicely in the afternoon. I got a wake up call from Irene :love: & we went to the Carowinds Theme Park & met up with her & her daughter. We had a blast and the best part about the park was the lines were never very long. So we were able to ride all the coasters we wanted. (This next part is for Irene only…I bought our picture from the Ricochet. I’ll scan it in & e-mail it to you…it was hilarious!!!)

Monday we had a few hours to kill before our flight home and we went to see Joe Gibbs Racing. They had a large viewing window over looking the entire assembly are and we could actually see through doors and windows into other areas of the shop. Also could see into their weight training facility. Like Hendrick & DEI, they had a large display with a lot of the trophies the Gibbs drivers have won over the years. Then we ventured up to Brett Bodine Racing. Not a fancy facility by any means, but I did see one thing that impressed me that I didn’t see at any of the other shops. The guys were actually working their tails off. You could see everything going on in the shop through their viewing windows also which was nice. And my daughters had fun playing with the BBR shop dogs out front also…lol.

Next Winston Cup race for me in Chicagoland…

[Speedworx]

Gald you enjoyed yourself. Maybe one day I will get to a race.

[Joe Fan]

Thanks for the report. I have heard that touring team's shops during the Winston weekend is a major deal that every NASCAR fan should do sometime. One of these days, I am going to do this but I still want to do Daytona Speedweeks first.

[Ax Slinger]

Originally posted by Lars
I believe it was a Talladega car...didn't have a chance to read it because I had to take a picture of every Winston Cup trophy for Shortie.

When I first read this, I thought "What? There's only four of them..." Then it occured to me. There's only four Winston Cup Championship trophies, but there's 58 race trophies. So I guess taking pictures of all of them might just take awhile...

And I'll bet you did take a lot of pictures of Matt Kenseth's shop, too... So please tell me you have a digital camera or a scanner! I wanna see the pics!

[Lars]

Actually there was five WC trophies there...they had Terry's 96 one on display too. But Shortie only wanted her pic taken with each one of Gordon's WC trophies. They must make a bunch of duplicates of those things also. Besides in the museum, they had his 4 WC trophies on display at his shop also. I always see last year's on the set of Fox's Sunday morning Nascar show also. No dig. camera but have a scanner. But I usually have them put on disk & they upload them on there website for free for 30 days after I pick them up.

[Ax Slinger]

That's cool. Did you know that on a Netfirms free website you can host photos? Of course, if you like you could email the link to where they are to me and I'd be happy to download them and make a website for you.

[Lars]

I used to have a personal page through my ISP that I would put up pictures I really liked, but their server must have crashed because its not there anymore & I haven't had a chance to upload e/thing again. You'll have to muddle through about 12 of my wife's pics (not sure what they are of?) from the 1st roll & I still have about 6 or 7 pics on the roll in the camera. They should be ready Sunday afternoon.

[Lars]

I hope they don't move the Winston out of Charlotte. Humphy puts on a great show. The only thing we had a bad time about was the cold weather...lol. They had the 5 no bull drivers compete in a slalom race in an 18-wheeler to pair them up with the no bull 5 fans for the 600. The best time was posted by Sterling Marlin, next was Tony Stewart...then I believe Ryan Newman was next and then Jeremy Mayfield was after him. And rounding out the top 5 was Mark Martin. I told everyone by me that Mark should win this thing as he jumped into the truck...after all he owns a trucking company that was his late father's at one time. But we he was terrible out there. He must have had four penaltys for knocking over the orange pylons...lmao.

[Ax Slinger]

Supposedly, there's a bunch of folks in Charlotte that say they are willing to spend a $Million on marketing if NASCAR keeps in in Charlotte. Maybe they should just give that money to Bruton and Johnny, and they'll back off on the lawsuit, then NASCAR might forget all about this moving The Winston jazz...

[Lars]

Got some bad news about the pictures Tim, was going to send an e-mail...but I figured I'm here & I'll just post it. Major SNAFU...LOL. Only got 3 out of the 4 rolls...one they didn't include the diskette...so they took everything back. When I dropped them off, I couldn't find the drop off box since they re-did our Wal-Mart into one of those super stores. So I asked at the counter & they just took care of filling it out for me. Well, I didn't realize I had to check a box to get them put online...it has been a while since I brought in pictures...not since the IRL race in Chicago last year. In Atlanta last November, my dad has his camera so I didn't bring my wife's. Any hoo, it probably was a good thing, none of the night pics turned out. I figured there would be enough light at the track, that some might. And some I had to take through glass didn't fair to well either. Must of had the angle wrong & the flash got in the way. Oh well, never said I was good at taking pictures...all though a lot or racing picturs have turned out really nice for me...lol. I'll just e-mail some of them out every so often.