The day started wicked, wicked early around 5AM when I embarked on the 2.75 hour ride to the "Magic Mile". After repeated listenings to "Herman's Hermits Greatest Hits", I arrived and hit the media building where, much to my surprise, I had Full Boat Access. Last year for this race I had Bare Bones Access - media center, pit road, and the local divisions' garage area. This year I get to play in the pressbox, as well as wandering around the Winston Cup garages. Not that I had a heckuva lot of business there, but I took the opportunity on Friday to snap a few pictures.

Last year I was hovering around just outside the Busch North inspection garage when I was almost run over by Dale Shaw's car being pushed out of inspection. Later that day, Shaw won the race. Destined to keep that phenomenom going, I tried throwing myself in front of Geoff Bodine's car on its way to inspection on Friday morning. Fortunately, I thought better of it.

Winston Cup practice was about to start and I had already come real close to causing someone to have an accident. At the gate between the local garages and the Cup garage I was pausing for Mike Skinner who was slowly making his way through signing autographs. Then I almost get knocked over from behind and recover to see Jeff Burton scrambling to get to the men's room before practice started.

Fortunately I brought the big gear bag as there was no shortage of Free Stuff to accumulate! As I write this in the "inner room" of the Media Center on Saturday morning (7:57AM - groan) I've gotten an embarrassment of free Tic Tacs, all kinds of racing publications, the usual assortment of free Pepsi products, and now just a couple minutes ago someone from Johnny Benson's team brought in a case of Pop Secret Homestyle popcorn, which I just happened to be addicted to. The real crime is that I won't be anywhere near a microwave for another couple days.

In Cup qualifying the remaining crowd darn near tore the joint down when they announced Ricky Craven's qualifying time. Even the official scorers were taken aback - over the radio the woman who relays qualifying times prefaced the report with "You're not going to believe this". Even I, the jaded Alleged Racing Writer who's seen it all and shrugged most of it off, had goosebumps for some time after Craven pulled his car in after qualifying, his window net down and his fist clenched in the air.

This was after a couple rain delays, the first of which set everything back about an hour and resulted in a lot of nervous folks waiting for their turn to get on the clock. Sterling Marlin was first out and found the going awful. Geoff Bodine was second out and held things up for a good ten minutes while a whole entourage trooped out to turn one to see how tough the sledding was going to be. Someone suggested that they bring a piece of toilet paper out there with them. "The old Harry Hyde trick," someone said on the radio, "put a piece of toilet paper on the track and see if it gets wet."

I think more free stuff just arrived!

With all the delays in Cup qualifying, there were still 63 Busch North cars - well, 62 since Tim Zock couldn't answer the bell - attempting to qualify. They only had one qualifying session so they were given two laps to record time, and usually the first lap was the faster. Rookie Jeff Taylor, in a second-year team that couldn't even make races last year, won his second consecutive pole position but it wasn't nailed down until after the last car passed through the clocks at five minutes after 8PM.

For the first time that I can remember, the Winston Cup cars are faster than the Modifieds on this track. Tom Bolles won the pole for the Mods with a 29.744 second lap, while Craven's pole time was 29.655. The Mods will be faster in their race, though, thanks to their wicked drafting.

Onward and lateralword to Saturday!
--
"Alan J. Claffie" <[email protected]>
NHIS UCAP Part II
Saturday Saturday Saturday

Evening accommodations provide to be just barely accommodating and, with little else to do, hit the road again to the Magic Mile. I arrived before anything started happening and waited for them to start.

Free Stuff Update: As I type this from the infield media center I'm watching Happy Hour going on on the other side of the window. Earlier today I got the Microwave Popcorn Coup and whiel I have gotten more Free Stuff, it pales in comparison. There were more Tic Tacs and assorted racing newspapers as well.

I love this place. I'm typing merrily away on another document - Happy Hour has since ended and things are getting dark here - and this guy comes around with a big tray of bottled water and asks if I'd like to partake, and I did despite the fact that I wasn't thirsty! Could this ever get old?

I'm still working on my race report for the Modified race with the BGNN race next on the list. It's twenty after six, the sun is right in my face, and the view I have is the porta-pottie guys "servicing" the sani-can in front of me on pit road. Not everything that goes on here is glamorous...

Some folks behind me are discussing whether or not there will be two (or more) grooves in the Cup race tomorrow. He said the Mods were always two-wide and sometimes up in a third groove, and the BGNN crew were using two grooves with some regularity. Then he said, "whether tomorrow they use two grooves or just put on a 'coast and collect' show, we'll see". "Coast and collect"? Why, Winsotn Cup racing would never disappoint the paying audience by taking things too conservatively, would they?

I've been here two long days and I don't think I've been sunburned yet.

Drat! Bob Paulin knows who I am. The Media Coordinator for the BGNN folks found me and clarified a point regarding my race report from the previous week's race. I don't know which is worse - that I had some kinda-sorta bad information in my reporting, or that people of relative import are recognizing me and approaching me. I strive to keep a pretty low profile at the track, but the more I do the more easily recognized I am by people, and anyone who knows me knows how much I just love people in general.

What will they think of next? The media guy just handed out "NASCAR 50th Anniversary" candy bars - a milk chocolate crisp rice stock car-shaped candy bar. The wrapping says "EXPERIENCE THE WINNING TASTE" and I did!

OK it's 7:54PM, the Mod and BGNN reports are done, there's been no activity on the track for at least an hour and a half, and there are still some people in the stands who aren't part of the cleanup crew. I'll bet the view's spectacular, though I suspect it'll seem way too quiet.

"Alan J. Claffie" <[email protected]>
NHIS UCAP Part III
UCAP Part 3 - Sunday Sunday Sunday   BE THERE

As I writer it is now 6:35AM Sunday morning. I forget exactly when I got here but I do remember being at the supermarket buying Pop Tarts at 5:19AM - a time I that I would much rather not be awake. For that matter, 6:53AM is a time I would much rather not be awake, but I don't see myself sneaking in any more Z's till late tonight after this Sleep Deprivation Weekend.

The good news is that I won't have a zillion things to do when I get home - I was in the media center last night till around 8PM and the race recaps from Saturday's races are done save for a final going-over (proofreading is for wimps, BTW) before getting flung off to the publisher. Items for my Mod Tour and BGNN sites are pretty much done as well, so all that needs to be done is a recap of the Cup race and I might just do that after the race here - gawd knows I won't be in any hurry to get out of here.

The scalpers seem to be out in force around the pedestrian walkways and all along Route 106, and though it may be hard to believe they're getting dumber by the minute. It used to be that one was following the other, with the first holding a sign saying "I NEED TICKETS" while the second holds up a half-dozen tickets. But both yesterday and today I saw single scalpers with tickets in right hand, "I NEED TICKETS" sign in left....  obviously someone needs to clue these dimwits into the true meaning of the word "need".

In addition to the scalper scum, people are being accosted along the walkways with MBNA folks taunting them with towels, and there's a full crew of Winston babes looking for anyone with yellow teeth to recruit for their petition or whatever they're doing with those clipboards.

The battery buzzer is going off, the reunion is in 3.25 hours, so I'm signing off.

OK I'm back. It's 5:59PM, the reunion has happened, the race has been run, and now I'm back in the infield media center along with about 50 other folks tapping away madly at their keyboards cranking out 50 different accounts of the same race. FWIW among laptops, Toshibas seem to be the laptop of choice among both alleged and legitimate racing writers. I'm accumulating a pretty good stack of papers full of quotes and statistics and updated points standings (already - !) and all sorts of stuff that may or may not be useful for those with overnight deadlines. I have the luxury of a Monday night (or so) deadline, so I can work at a bit of a more leisurely pace. I could very well do this stuff at home, but considering there's an estimated 90,000 people all wanting to get to the highway, being in a hurry is certainly not how to describe me.

It is now 6:40PM, my race report is written and all that's left for this alleged racing writer is my regular weekly column, which I could probably very well blow off and my publisher would have nothing to howl about considering everything else coming his way tomorrow night. However, there's still probably a zillion people backing up traffic down the road so I'm continuing to be in a no- rush no-fuss mode while accomplishing precious little or nothing.

Speaking of a zillion people, we reunionized at the appointed place at the appointed hour and there were more people than I knew names for. I only offended two Canadians and announced my nomination as the worst-dressed member of the Winston Cup press corps. I've made a mental note to drastically improve my attire for the second Cup weekend at the end of August.

I was all over the place this morning - starting in the garages, then moving to across the track to the press box and when that got too crowded I headed back outdoors to the spotter stand where a brisk breeze did not prevent me from taking in the sights from the tallest point of the Speedway. As I was scribbling notes on my clipboard there a member of Jeremy Mayfield's team arrived and strapped a couple radios to the railing in the front of the stand.

"You get first dibs?" I asked.
"Yup."
"Is it by points or whoever gets here first?"
"It's every man for himself," was the reply.

He left and I was gone too, taking a very scenic route across the track and through the Cup garages once again on my way to the reunion described briefly above.

For the race I had a seat that was quite high up in row 39, but when I got there I discovered I'd be sitting between a couple of, ah, large people. Figuring things could not be much worse, I picked up my gear and checked to see if there was room in the press box to squeeze in, and by golly there was an unclaimed seat which I plopped down in front of and things got oh so much better. No standing, no sunburn, no, ah, large people, and no Gordon-haters. What was included with the deal was a hot roast beef sandwich lunch, Mrs. Bahre's homemade chocolate chip cookies, all the free Pepsis and Mt.Dews I could drink, and room to sprawl with binoculars, scanner, and clipboard spread in front of me. Throw in more Free Stuff (official Winston Cup notepad, event program, track press guide, every 75 lap updates and sheets with quotes from drivers who dropped out of the race thrust in front of me before the cars' bodies were warm) and I pretty much made up my mind that this was The Place From Which To Watch Races.

I have Scanner Bites!

#35 crew member: "Gary [Bradberry] just might put us in victory lane today" - said before the command to fire engines (and the team was still mathematically eligible for the win)

#42 crew member: "Damn 9 crushed the s*** out of Sterling, blew his tire and knocked all the crush panels out" after Sterling's contact with Lake Speed and the resulting spin and necessary repairs.

#28 crew chief: "Give em room, we don't need to make no enemies" as Irwin was off the pace and getting passed by lead-lap cars after a restart

#1 DW: "I let em go, they were worrying me to death" referring to his letting Earnhardt and Schrader pass him easily on the backstretch on lap 53

#7 Geoff: "They're going f****** crazy about the 50, excuse my language" - what a conscientious fellow!

MRN was pretty much a non-factor as far as commercial-time quotes were concerned, perhaps because some of the crew had spent the previous night at Myrtle Beach and flown up to New Hampster early this morning. However, they were in rare form late in the event.

"Is there another race we can go to tonight?" "I think Spud Speedway has a 50-lapper for street stocks"
"I'm on it!"
[pause]
"If you hurry, you can make it to Nazareth for the end of the truck race"
"Take Al [Robinson] with you"
"They say the coupes are going 75 [laps] at Norway Pines tonight" "Now if I knew the way to Norway Pines...."
"I do!"

Later in the program, from one of their pit reporters: "I feel like I'm in a nudist colony with all my clothes on"

And during the last commercial break of the race: "Is this where the fun starts?"
"The fun started at 5AM sitting on the steps of the Days Inn at Myrtle Beach"
"You did the Days Inn?"
"At least I didn't have to worry about the bedbugs biting, the roaches ate em all"

The race was on TV so I don't need to go into much for description there (for those who want to read my blow-by-blow, come to Riverside Park Speedway next Saturday and pick up a copy of the Racin' Paper). The only strange thing that happened post-race was that unofficial scoring had Bobby Labonte finishing ahead of Kenny Wallace at the line, while it was pretty clear to me as it was happening that Wallace hit the stripe first. I wasn't in the infield media center long before it was announced that after inspection of the start-finish line videotape, Wallace was awarded tenth and Labonte eleventh. They could have just asked me.

So while I'm merrily hammering away at my race report the media folks are working their tails off distributing assorted releases, and in front of me I have:

12 pages of driver quotes - all 3 manufacturers, winners, losers, middle-of-packers, including 3 pages along from the 99 team 3 different sets of unofficial results
1 page of just money won for the field
1 page of cumulative lap rundown stuff
1 page of winners of various program winners (my vote for Headache Award, Rich Bickle, won it)
1 page of Jeff Burton facts and other race notes
And this was just from the Cup race - I'm not even counting my take from Friday and Saturday.

I think my total paper handout total for the whole weekend has to be hovering around 50 pages total. I suspect I'm going to use precious little of it in my various submissions, though.
Well it's 7:35PM. It's been three hours since the Cup race ended andI suspect traffic still is pretty heavy, but not as bad as it may have been had I decided to leave immediately following the race. My regular column is started but I may not even finish it - regardless, it's something to do tomorrow.

My Lost Weekend in New Hampshire is heading for a close as I turn off the computer, pack my gear, and head to the car for a leisurely 3-hour ride back to Berkshire County. Next week it's back to tracks I'm more familiar with - quarter-milers like Monadnock Speedway and Riverside Park. I might be more familiar with them, but I'll be hard-pressed to get treated nearly as well as they treated me here as a rookie Winston Cup reporter this weekend. I'll take this opportunity here to publically thank the media relations folks at NHIS for treating an amatuer just the same as they treat the old pros, letting me play just about anywhere I wanted all weekend, and knocking themselves out feeding me information and all the Free Stuff I could handle. I'm grateful for the opportunity to cover races at their fine facility, and look forward to returning in a few weeks for the Trucks/BGNN/Modifieds tripleheader in early August as well as their second Cup weekend at the other end of the month, when I plan on doing this all over again just like this time - except next time, I'm going to be a little better dressed.

Claff signs off at 7:41PM.
Alan J. Claffie, North Adams, MA            | [email protected]
Director, BGNN Online (http://www.bgnn.com) | Ph: (413)664-8607
NASCAR Busch Grand National North Coverage  | Fax:(413)664-8608

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