Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Day 2

Early this morning, I blogged about my home track of Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and expressed some dismay at the way they handled helping the handicapped.

Today, I feared the situation would be even worse, as we took a cart with the expectation that we would be able to get closer to the Neon Garage. Our first driver dropped us at a location that was even further away from the garage than where we parked, and I frankly blew my stack! After reassuring the volunteer driver that I was not angry with him, I went in search of a supervisor. Said supervisor gave us and our cart driver another set of instructions, which then had us dropped at a shuttle line.

While preparing to board a shuttle, we asked the attendant about how to get to the garage, and discovered that the regular shuttles went nowhere near the garage. But the attendant immediately called for a handicapped van, and gave us clear instructions on how to call for a van to pick us up for our trip to the grandstands. From that point forward, everything went smoothly, both to the Neon Garage, and on the return trip to the Earnhardt Terrace.

My guest used the elevator to get to a higher level in the stands to enable her to walk down to our row. (Climbing is the challenge for her, in this situation.) She reported the elevators were large and numerous, unlike the single elevator at Fontana. Indeed she made it to her seat before I did, after I took a short detour to visit the women's facilities, where it was clean, well-stocked, and with plenty of 'seating.'

After yesterday's mess, it was refreshing to have a better day today. And the race was pretty good, too!

Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Day 1

Last week, I blogged about Auto Club Speedway's track experience. This week, my home track comes under scrutiny.

The Neon Garage is fabulous! I still love the way we have access to the drivers, although I imagine that many of them feel like they are the exhibits in a zoo!

Traffic was a bit of a nightmare, but that is to be expected with the massive construction project on the I-15 highway.

For some reason, the fan access to the head of pit road was blocked. One of the greatest pleasures of having a pit pass is to see the drivers walk with their cars. That was sharply curtailed this time.

The greatest problem we had is that of handicapped access. While the Neon Garage and the stands have ways for one with special needs to move around, the track had a major issue with the handicapped parking area. For some reason, they had their tram pickup point based at the back of the parking lot, with no ability to enter the lot until you reached the end of the lot. People who had parked in that lot to get as close to the entrance as possible, now needed to travel several yards more distant to then walk back to their cars.

I have had a friend visiting who has a need to rest after walking short distances. I have indeed become more aware of handicap access, and the LVMS staff could not explain why this happened. One could hope that the numbers of fans who complained,and who called the special assistance line, will pay attention.

Auto Club 500-Track Facilities Review-Good, Bad, and Ugly!

California Speedway, also known as Auto Club Speedway, is a track that tends to polarize the NASCAR Nation. Many feel the track gets away from the Southern roots of the sport, despite the fact that Riverside was an early race in the NASCAR circuit. While not perfect, there are many aspects to this track that are Good, Bad, and Ugly!

Every fan that goes to a track walk away with an array of impressions. It had been a 3 year absence from visiting this track, but I have a friend visiting from Canada, and it made sense for us to visit both Fontana and Vegas in a short trip. Here is our assessment of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!

The Good!

Pit Passes-these were free to those who took advantage of a specific AAA offer. And worth it! While it is not the most accessible of pit roads, it is still a 4 on a scale of 5. Great job on the improvements, yet there is room for more.

Bench seating had more butt room. It may have been because of the smaller attendance, but it was great having plenty of elbow room!

Want to take a quick mid-race break for the restrooms, and come out hearing a cheer from the crowd? No problem! You can catch up to what happened on the tv monitors that are liberally distributed around the underside of the grandstand.

Also, Sprint Fanview has a great deal going. If you are a Sprint customer, you can get a wonderful price on their FanView scanner accessory. It is well worth it, for a weekend rental of $29.99, a huge savings from last year.

The TV watchers could not see what we saw. There were more people in the stands this year than had been seen in years. Even drivers in their cars commented on the difference. Perhaps the track dodged another rain bullet, but with the cloudy drizzly rain in the morning, the attendance at the track was the best seen in years. The first drizzle hit during the driver introductions, and the stand starting thinning.

There were no dolphins on site, at least not those of the seafaring mammal types. Thank heavens! I could never see the connection. There was just something wrong about bringing dolphins to the track.

Extremely helpful staff! When asked, they helped! The best of the best, Cory, took our ticket order and I felt like he was a buddy afterwords! He worked to give us the best ticket package possible.


The Bad

The passenger carts were great, but when one has accessibility issues, having a tram or cart take you to the edge of the parking lot will not help those who cannot walk distances, if your car is parked on the other side of that same lot. We ended up leaving both the Cup and Nationwide races early, due to needing help to get to the parking lot. There are ways it can be done better. For instance, Texas Motor Speedway has constant movement of trams moving around the parking lot,giving passengers a ride when needed. Rarely, a fan had to wait more than 5 minutes. Fontana should take a good look at how TMS runs it's operations, as moving people to and from the parking lots is intrinsic to fan satisfaction. And after attending TMS twice, I can see where it really works!

Elevators in the grandstand area were not up to snuff. It was great to have them, but to have them break down on the busiest day was challenging for some, including television camera carriers heading up to the spotters stand to film the race.

There is a 'parking pass' that is distributed to fans who purchase tickets early. We did not have a parking pass, yet we managed to park with others who did have parking passes. And on the other side of our parking area, we saw a party of 20 who were partying when we left for the race, and they were still there when we returned. If one limits access to the souvie area, should one also limit access to the parking areas....one ticket equals one parking place? Hmmm....maybe, maybe not!

Souvenir trailers find themselves in an unusual situation at this track. Listening to Gillian Zucker on Sirius NASCAR Radio on Friday morning, she claimed that she fenced off the Souvenir area from non-ticket holders because "we are not a shopping mall." In non-formal interviews with several of the trailer operators, we heard that Zucker's reasoning was flawed. The operators were telling us that business dropped drastically when the area was fenced off, and many operators don't even want to make the trip. However, they had no problems with attending the race in Las Vegas the following weekend.

Zucker also told the Sirius listening audience that there were some wonderful garlic fries available. We never found them. We really wanted to find them. But, there was not even a trace of a garlic aroma in the air to lead us there. I suspect ther were in a specific food area, but there was nothing to point me there.

The 'napkin in the grill' situation in 2004 still looms over the track. The internet message boards still think the California fans are sloppy, yet there were several cars at Daytona who had paper attached to their grills. At any rate, Fontana had done a great job of reducing the availability of items to clog a grill, to the point of being ridiculous. You can't have a napkin with your hotdog, but it is served with a waxed paper sheet. However, the track was spotless with no paper debris before the race.

The ugly!

Getting in and out of the track on Friday and Saturday was amazingly easy. However, the traffic on Sunday was unacceptable! It took two hours to traverse 3 miles. I discussed the situation with a member of the San Bernadino County Sheriff department, who said that there were four law enforcement jurisdictions who were trying to coordinate all of the actions. When I reported that a fellow traveler on the same stretch (one makes friends when it takes two hours to travel....the windows roll down and you talk at the others in the lane next to you, and you become BFF's!) said it was worse this year, the response was that they had no idea how slow the traffic was (in spite of the motorcyle cops patrolling the road!)

There is no excuse to have bad restroom facilities. By Lap 26 of the Camping World (Truck) race on Saturday showed that there were restroom facilities that were out of toilet tissue. (And this was the FIRST race of two races, preceding the Nationwide race that same day.) Depending on the restroom visited, a fan would find varying degrees of water pressure for hand washing. The troughs in the women's room's either had a trickle, or a dribble. The soap dispensers were hard to find, and the water to rinse the soap took multiple presses of buttons. Someone needs to call a plumber!

All in all, as one of my guests stated...it was not horrible to the point of refusing to return, but there was not anything to cause a claim of "oh yeah, I wanna go back there!"

Personally, I will wait before deciding on going back. I gave myself a 4 hour window to arrive at the track, and barely made it to driver introductions. I know that there will be traffic problems, but this was the worst seen in years.

In the past, I have been the first to say the racing was better in the stands, as opposed to what was seen on TV. I can't say that this time. Frankly, I was embarrassed to take friends to this track. It was a typical race with one leader pulling away from the rest, and observers could not even see any racing back in the pack.

Bring on Vegas! Let is see what they offer!

Cutting Ties! Gilliland, Kvapil and Yates Racing.

When the 2008 race season ended, it was a time for many NASCAR drivers to sit back on their laurels and enjoy their past successes. It was time to take off, have fun, frolic, and for a couple of drivers, get married. Other drivers, though, would have loved to be able to enjoy the off-season, but were unable to do so. They were the ones whose jobs were in jeopardy.

Many of the mid-pack and back-marker teams were also reflecting on their past, and planning for their futures. One team in particular, Yates Racing, made some dramatic changes, and made them with such speed it left the media spinning and the drivers' fans reeling.

Fans of David Gilliland and Travis Kvapil spent a watchful season, waiting for news of sponsors or a show of driver support from the owners. After all, things were looking positive, as Paul Menard was slated to be a third team mate, along with the cash infusion from Paul's family business run by his father, John. As December rolled closer to Christmas, we were thrilled to hear David on Sirius radio, talking about the need for sponsorship, but that he would indeed be in a car at the Daytona 500. We also heard from various sources that Travis also had sponsorship for 5 races, and he too would not only be in the 500, but was qualified for the Budweiser Shootout.

The bottom fell out of the hopes of the fans on January 13th. The announcement of Hall of Fame's 'alliance' with Yates Racing was a bombshell, surprising the media, and leaving many shocked. One of those shocked was David Gilliland, as he had heard via the internet that he was out of a ride. By the next day, he had talked with Max Jones, and appeared on Claire B Lang's show "Dialed In" on Sirius. David admitted he had heard the initial news from the internet, and David did a notably good job of being positive.

In the last three weeks, fans of both Yates drivers have heard that the owners points earned by Travis would be sent to Paul's car, and the points earned by David would be passed to Bobby, thereby enabling both newly installed car numbers/drivers to be entered in the Shoot-out.

We have also heard Doug and Max proclaim that David was a good guy, and they were trying to find something for him. Discerning fans immediately saw that there was nothing available for a Ford driver in Cup, Nationwide or Camping World Truck series. It was extremely noticeable that Yates would not do anything to support David, or try to find sponsorship for David, when they announced the new Business Development team. The announcement specifically mentioned the 28, the 96, and the 98. Neither the 38 or David Gilliland was mentioned anywhere in the announcement, a clear statement that they were not going to be working towards any sponsorship for David.

Travis also lost his sponsor to Bobby Labonte, and will be running his five races with 'catch as you can' sponsors, or with a blank car. At this point, David continues to be under contract, and it is hopeful that he is being paid due to that contract. David was also not invited to the Charlotte media tour, and he is also not part of the Media 'cattle call' at Daytona. And one wonders why, if Travis will run five races, why they can't use David for a few races? David would most certainly be a great ringer for the road course events.

It is painfully obvious that David is on the team in name only, and there will be no effort to support him. I understand that Max and Doug certainly have the need to run profitable businesses. Having sponsored cars is great. Having a driver the likes of Bobby Labonte is equally great. But both Bobby and Paul need to be grateful that Travis and David paved the way for them. If not for the efforts of Gilliland and Kvapil, there would not be teams there waiting for them to step into.


The two Yates cars will probably do much better in 2009. But, it will be because Yates is running with sponsorship funds, not due to lack of effort from either of the 2008 drivers. In fact, Max Jones and Doug Yates owe huge debts to both Travis Kvapil and David Gilliland. One hopes that Doug and Max keep that in mind. David, for one, is remaining very generous in his relationships with Doug and Max. It is much more challenging for the fans to remain as generous.