Today was a really interesting day. It turns out that spectators can go out to the four courses and watch the cars leave from the start line. Since the courses are 10 miles long (not all cars run the full 10 miles), you can't see the end of the race, but you can watch the crews prepare the cars and the driver and watch them push off from the start line. That surprised me...almost all of the cars would start their engines and then be pushed by another truck or car up to some speed where they would engage their clutch and take off. I'm assuming it's because the cars are geared really high (for higher top-end speed) and probably don't produce a lot of torque at lower rpm's. As yesterday, the drivers, crews, and officials were all willing to talk to spectators at length about their cars.
Here are some of the more interesting ones I saw:
I actually talked to the owner of this car, No. 77. His name is Seth Hammond and he's been running race cars for 35 years. The driver (he's in the car if you look closely) I one of his crew members who's been with him (unpaid) for 34 years, and he's getting his first chance to drive one of the cars he's worked on. He did something like 235 mph.
This is a home-built motorcycle with two Harley-Davidson "Shovelhead" engines. I tried to ask the owner/rider a couple questions, and he told me questions were "20 bucks each!" Well, anyway, he was the only person I ran into who wasn't accommodating of my ignorance. Anyway, ol' Shovel did make at least one run, but I couldn't hear his speed:
This is a shot of a young lady rider on her sport bike. She did 199.34 mph on her run!:
Here a few other really cool cars I saw today:
And here's a shot up the line of cars that are waiting to leave the start line:
That's it for today. It's back to the Flats for tomorrow!
Miles today: 136. Total: 4,207.
