PDA

View Full Version : report from Charlotte



madfinnhockey
05-28-2010, 10:19 AM
Im down in Charlotte this week visiting my son (Knute2), and having a blast. Yesterday he took me to his pit stop practice and taught me how to index (put on) a tire, and how to jack. It was fun, but his old body just can't do it, so don't expect to see me doing that for any pit crew ever! Then I watched their practice, must be nice to be young!

And at a lot of remaining races their organization (Over the Wall) will be sponsored by Sprint and will be at the races doing pit stop demonstrations for the fans, so that will get the guys a lot of exposure! They are doing it for the first time this Sat & Sun at Charlotte.

OTW shares a facility with Carl Long, and I met him and watched him and his company building some race cars for a new racing series to take place at a Va. track, that was interesting.

I got to see a few buildings that used to be cup garages but have since been abandoned, but there were still a few skeltons of cars in there, sheet metal, some old sheet metal forming tools, etc, but other wise, dark and dusty. And we saw old wood barn that they filmed parts of the Days of Thunder movie.

Met some people from Stewart Hass Racing and today they are giving us a back scenes tour of the shop, should be a blast, then its a Hall of Fame visit. Got my NASCARCamping.com tee shirt on, wonder if anyone will recognize it while I'm out and about?

Knute2 is doing well with his pit stop job, doing ARCA, Trucks and some Nationwide now, only 1 more step to go!

More later

DCNascarFan
05-28-2010, 10:25 AM
Cool stuff - thanks for the update! Enjoy the race.

upsjed
05-28-2010, 07:25 PM
You crazy kids have fun...before you know it we'll be sharing some apple pie @ nhms.

madfinnhockey
05-28-2010, 10:22 PM
oh, apple pie, hey, its the all American drink!

Today had a great time in Charlotte. Went to the Hall of Fame and spent several hours there, saw Jr. Johnson!
Then we got the greatest shop tour at Stewart Hass. One of Erics pit crew buddies works there, so he took us behind the scenes, the 7 post machine, the stock room where we got to take parts of the shelves and were told all about them, the CNC room, everywhere, it was very very good.
Did the track walk and cookout at CMS this am, something they did for anyone who had tix to Sundays race. Dam that track is steep and banked, I walked the bottom all of the way around. It was HOT and sticky, but fun.
This evening it started raining, put a damper on the Speed Street activities so we're hanging in and relaxing.