NASCAR running thread

Plenty of evidence that NASCAR/ISC/SMI doesn't have any idea (nor much concern) what it's doing when it comes to getting folks and their cars in and out of these tracks.

Would anyone anywhere put up with this kind of gridlock leaving a baseball or a football game?

 

Azrael, there's a big difference. Baseball and football stadiums tend to be located in urban/suburban areas (college football an obvious exception, and try driving to and from a Penn State game sometime). For obvious reasons, racetracks are generally placed in a spot where they have few neighbors, which equals much smaller roads.

 

G, most of the new tracks were built at the confluence of several interstates to avoid the very traffic we're describing. Other tracks are - just like an Ohio State or Michigan football game - right in town. A few of the legacy tracks - New Hampshire, Pocono, Darlington - fit your description of being rural and relatively inaccessible.

The harum-scarum gridlock noted by folks leaving NASCAR events is largely a function of disorganization and corner-cutting.

 

PS - I don't mean to seem argumentative. I just want NASCAR to shoulder their fair share of the responsibility here.

 

New Hampshire and Pocono are the only tracks I've ever been to. Well, I went to an Indy 500, where traffic worked as well as could be expected, and Watkins Glen for Formula One as a teenager, where I don't remember. In truth, after a few horrific years, they have traffic down very well at New Hampshire, so it CAN be done.

 

It is perhaps a telling traffic detail that marquee NASCAR stars have lights and sirens on their SUVs like undercover cops for race weekends. Can't miss that sponsors' lunch or nearby book signing!

 

If you ever want a real driving thrill, get in the hammock between a couple of car haulers on the interstate during NASCAR race traffic. Or even better, drive on I-81 south while forgetting Pocono was the day before as they beat feet for North Carolina.

 

I've never been to a NASCAR race, but have endured more than my share of traffic leaving SEC football games. Stayed in the gridlock through most of the postgame show a time or two -- and that's in towns that deal with it six or seven times a year.
It's part of the deal. Some places handle it better than others, obviously, just like some places handle the game/race experience better than others.

 

Gridlock when you have 100,000 people around is part of the deal.

Hell, anyone ever try getting into or out of Foxboro/Gillette? It's an all-day affair, and they don't even have 70,000 in there.

 

Trying to get out of the golf course after a Rose Bowl or a UCLA/USC game is hardly a picnic, either.

 

Come to Indy at the end of the month. They'll have no problem getting 100,000 people in and out of the place in a very short amount of time.

Now, 250,000 in May? Different story, but the traffic isn't awful unless you take the route I took the last 2 years.

My experience with Kentucky is with IndyCar races, and my usual frustration at the local cops for refusing to let the traffic headed to Indiana go north out of the parking lot, instead assuming we're all from Louisville or Cincinnati and forcing us onto I-71. The last thing I need is to drive 60 miles down a deer-riddled interstate with a bunch of drunk race fans whizzing past me at 90mph at night.