EA Sports 500 at Talladega Superspeedway
On Sunday Joe, Kristen, and I went to Talladega Super Speedway for the EA Sports 500 NASCAR race. For about a year now Joe has been trying to get me to go to a NASCAR race, and he finally succeeded. Friends of his that know me have already been asking, “Did Adam like it?” Apparently my going was a Big Deal. I have learned the secret handshake.
So, did I like it? If Joe was right about one thing, it’s that you have no real concept of how fast 190mph is until you actually see, hear, and feel them fly by. Watching their speed as they came into view and off the back straightaway, onto the curve was pretty amazing, and then the overwhelming rush as the pack roars past your seat… it’s the kind of thing that puts a stupid smile on your face. For the first dozen laps all I could do was grin when they came along.
I left my house at 7:10am and returned at 11:30pm. It’s what you’d call a full day activity. We toured the parking areas around the speedway (which is the size of a medium sized city) and found a spot, then walked around to have a look at the sponsor trailers. The highlight was the Orange County Choppers trailer, where they had 3 bikes on display, one of which had been designed specifically for the race and was to be auctioned off. Later we would see Paul Sr. and Jr., the Grand Marshals, ride two of the bikes around the track. Celebrities!
Kristen and I avoided the AOL trailer and opted to go check out our seats. After some lunch we toured the walkway that’s set between the stands and the track fence. I wouldn’t be surprised if this walkway and the stands themselves were close to a mile in length. Kristen used her winning smile to get us down onto the track, if only for a couple minutes, and we made our way back in time for the race. Post race we hung around and tailgated for about 3 hours (Chef Joe prepared some scrumptous hamburgers on the Coleman stove), did a few Mad Libs, and finally made our [long] way back to I-20 starting at 8:30pm.
Aside from the speed and the shamelessness of the race-going population, what I was most impressed by was the degree to which this sport has been commercialized. Every available surface of the cars has been sponsored - even the intereiors of the car so the corporate logos will appear on the in-car camera view. The drivers’ suits are much the same way (I am not aware of any intereior cameras on them, however) The big screen TV’s in the infield had two sponsors. Dale Jr. gave EA Sports a brilliant endorsement in his victory interview, not to mention the PA announcers talking up the games during the pre-race program - EA certainly got their money’s worth. The official truck of NASCAR, the official headache powder, the official laxative (okay, I made that one up). I don’t think the spectacle we saw would have existed if not for the sponsors. The race awards (Dale Jr. has amassed $300k this season in the Winston Cup alone) pale in comparison to the sponsorship fees. It takes a lot of money to maintain half a dozen (or more) cars.
I’ve tried to find fault with this (my anti-commercialism reflexes from school are twitching), but I can’t do it. I don’t know the sport well enough to accuse it of selling out, but then I have trouble accusing anybody of selling out. You market your brand to build wealth. It’s what we do. NASCAR doesn’t really have any street cred (this is different from pickup cred), so it’s had nothing to lose by selling every bit of real estate off to companies ready for advertising. It’s not classy, but it gets the job done. Funny how some of the fans embody this spirit as well.