Saturday morning dawned clear and HOT. I was hoping the temps would stay down a bit, as there's hardly any shade at the track. Oh well, I applied lots and lots and lots of sunscreen and we headed out for the day. I decided we had spent enough money on food at the track, so I packed a lunch for tailgating later.
We arrived about 10:00 and headed directly to the garage area. There was alot more activity than on Friday. The Indy Lights were racing Saturday night and the Indy cars were getting ready for Sunday's race. We wondered a little further and found the area where all the driver's RV's were parked. At one point we thought we had a "Danica sighting"
but it turned out to be a false alarm. That is her RV on the right, just not her. Oh well, we'd keep looking. It wasn't long before we could hear and actually feel the sound of cars on the track. It's really something you need to experience to believe. Anyway, we headed back to an area where we could see what was going on and discovered that the Indy Light cars were doing practice laps. We found a spot to sit and watch for awhile. If these smaller cars were this loud, I couldn't imagine what the "big boys" were going to sound like. Ear plugs were definately going on my shopping list.
After their practice laps were watched them take the cars back to the garage and saw a couple of the drivers.
Then is was the Indy Car's turn for practice. They did it in 2 groups and Danica was in the second group, so we took a quick break and got a beverage. It was really hot, but a breeze did keep us from melting. After practice laps were over, there was a break for Indy Cars and the Light's got ready for qualifying for their race that night. We decided to head out to the truck for our lunch. When we got there we decided it was just too darned hot to tailgate in the parking lot so we headed into town for look for a park. We found a great spot in the shade and enjoyed about an hour of eating, relaxing, talking and just plain recharging before heading back.
We got in just in time to see the cars heading to the inspection area before doing qualifying for the race on Sunday.
I couldn't believe that at that critical point we were able to get so close to the cars. There was a delay and several cars ended up parked right in front of where we were standing. We were close enough to touch them, but decided that we would probably we safer if we didn't try.
We waited for about an hour and only 3 cars had been out on the track to qualify. It had been raining so much in the area, that even though the track appeared to be dry, water kept seeping up and causing some really slick spots. Crews kept going out on the track with towels to dry and soak it up and get things dried out.
They ended up canceling qualifying completely and we got ready to head back to camp. On the way out I got my first Indy Car Driver sighting. Dan Weldon, who drives the National Guard car had taken a couple of minutes to sign a few autographs.
We didn't make it over in time to get an autograph, but I did get a quick picture. We decided to skip the actual autograph session that evening, as we were getting tired, the crowd was getting bigger and it was looking like rain. We headed back to camp to get a good night's sleep. I couldn't wait for Sunday!!!!
Stay tuned for the conclusion of Indy Car Adventures...........................
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