Today we officially present the first edition of a new, recurring feature in my daily NASCAR blog. I call it the Chicken Bone Section.
For the uninitiated, the chicken bone section is the nastiest, yet most, shall we say flavorful, section of the racetrack grandstand. It is typically located in the first few rows down by the fence, where hardcore race fans forsake earplugs for an experience full of tire rubber, brake dust, beer foam and chicken grease.
Like its namesake, our Chicken Bone Section will be a catch-all for anything and everything NASCAR-related: e-mails, photos, ridonkulous track tales and whatever else gets thrown down on our heads from the pricier seats above.
So grab a spork, a mesh-back STP hat and a Harry Gant Fan Club shirt, and read on.
Ryan McGee
The Magic Bus pulled into the Lowe's Motor Speedway over the weekend.
Taking Infield
Spotted this retired scholastic beauty across from the media lot in the infield of the Lowe's Motor Speedway last weekend. At first, I thought maybe this was the guy who I caught siphoning gas from my truck on Friday afternoon. (For real, I saw him standing by the fence with a hose and a jug, but he disappeared into the turn three jungle before I could catch him.) However, it was not. Instead, it was a very nice man with a penchant for pennants, bumper stickers, Dale Earnhardt Sr. and the United States of America.
My personal favorite details about the bus were: A.) the contingency sponsor stickers placed behind the front fenders and carefully arranged so that they mimicked an actual Sprint Cup car, and B.) a parking ticket that was picked up somewhere in Georgia, but never removed from the left corner of the windshield.
I was told the bus sleeps 10 comfortably, but that's irrelevant because, "We don't come to the racetrack to sleep."
Throttle Linkage
•The Daytona Beach News-Journal's Godwin Kelly opens up a can of very large worms about Dale Earnhardt Jr.
•Interesting take on all of the empty seats at Lowe's Motor Speedway by the Charlotte Observer's excellent columnist Tom Sorenson.
•And another on the same topic from Monte Dutton.
This Ain't Your Grandpappy's NASCAR
Earlier this year Mark Martin, a self-professed "50-something Arkansas hillbilly," joked that a reporter needed to speak up because he's such an old man he can't hear well anymore.
Truth is, he might be hard of hearing because of the tunes he's cranking inside that Impala. Dude loves Trick Daddy. No, seriously. If you don't believe me, check out Jeff Gluck's recently re-posted story from NASCAR Scene Daily.
The Hollywood Minute
Director Michael Bay was on hand for Saturday night's Cup race to promote the DVD release of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." He checked out Ryan Newman's Chevy, which carried the colors of Optimus Prime; Jeff Gordon's Monte Carlo, which bore the face of Megatron and drove the pace car. Busy night.
I resisted the urge to make him take back my copy of "Pearl Harbor," and instead asked him about the possibility that the man behind "The Rock" and "Armageddon" will ever make a NASCAR flick.
"There hasn't been a good one in a really long time, has there?" he said while fiddling with the iPod that he planned to shoot dashboard video of his pace laps with. (I'll link to it if he ever posts it.) "Sports movies are hard. The team has to lose and then it has to win."
Bay claimed to hit 100 mph during his training session with racer-turned-pace car driver Brett Bodine, but was held to 45 mph when he actually paced the field before the start of the race. "You think, man, 45 isn't very fast. Then you look in your rear view mirror and see 43 racecars back there. It's kind of scary."
Imagine how scary it would be if they all turned into giant robots.
Bay has a story about the night and a batch of photos up on his Web site.
Tales From The Road
I was at Lowe's Motor Speedway all day Friday, but did not attend that night's Nationwide Series race because of a previously planned date night with Mrs. McGee. We instead headed to our favorite Italian restaurant here in Charlotte, Villa Antonio. At regular intervals during the evening I excused myself to step into the bar and check on said race, a standard part of our night-out routine (romantic, I know).
By about the third trip to the TV, I realized that a slightly older gentleman in an Izod jacket seemed to be coming into the bar every time I came out, and vice-versa. Eventually we ended up there at the same time and I realized that we were both checking in on the race.
"Who's your driver?" I asked.
"Jeff Burton," he said.
"He's a good man, Jeff Burton," I replied.
"Thanks," the man said, extending his hand for a shake. "I'm his daddy, John."
John, father of Jeff and older brother Ward (a Daytona 500 winner), was quite a racer himself back in the day. He ran hydroplane boats, competed in sports car races until he was nearly 70 and, last I heard, was a nationally ranked 65-and-over USTA tennis player. John and Ward's grandfather started the family construction business years ago, which is now run by John and his other son, Brian. Their office is packed with memorabilia from Jeff and Ward's careers, from the earliest kart racing days to Victory Lanes in Darlington and Texas, among others. It was John's hard work and sacrifice that allowed his sons to go racing full-time when it would have been much easier to put them to work in the construction company.
Thanks to research from a couple of previous stories, I already knew all of this about Mr. Burton. But I chose not to unload all my data on the man while he was still digesting his dinner. Instead, we talked racing and were later joined by my wife and his large group of friends, including a couple that flies in every year from London to crash at Ward's wilderness cabin and go to the Charlotte races. We cheered when Jeff took the lead and grumbled when he faded to finish ninth. "If you're looking for me during the next Charlotte race weekend, I'll be right here," he said, smacking the bar. "We've been coming here to eat for 25 years."
Then John Burton and his posse loaded up the conversion van (with Jeff Burton bumper stickers across the back door), and headed back to another place that's long been a part of their family's history -- the racetrack.
Ryan McGee
