After watching the crew work on Junior's car for a while, I trotted off to the Infield Care Center to see if I could catch a glimpse and maybe hear him tell the reporters his side of what happened.
I waited around for quite some time, and eventually Ward Burton emerged. Unfortunately, Dale Jr. must have come out before I'd gotten there, so I missed him. I left with the reporters, and went back to the garage to check on the progress of his car. Dale Jr. was in the garage when I got there, talking to DEI employees and watching the crew. Not too long afterward, he took the car back to the track.
After the car went back on the track, a lot of fans were waiting around, hoping to get a piece of Dale Jr.'s damaged car. One crewmember handed a fan what appeared to be part of the drive shaft. The fan got him to autograph it. A few minutes later, a security guard came up and told him he couldn't take it from the garage. Apparently, there is some sort of strict policy about allowing fans to remove things from the garage (probably afraid they will steal tools and stuff). Anyway, the guy argued that the crewman had given it to him, and even though I didn't know the guy, I stood up for him. Eventually the security guard told him to "just be careful" because the security at the gates might stop him.
After they cleaned up the mess they took off the car, I managed to grab a few lug nuts they were getting ready to dump in the trash. By the time I got back out to pit road, Dale Jr. was already on his way back in with a blown engine or something. I wandered up and down pit road until the race was over.
Mom reported the following radio communications from the #2:
"I'm trying to get this d--- pit road speed. It's all over the place."
After a pit, "Did you see what that 10 did to me? He put the tire way out there in front of me and tried to block me in!"
"You did a real good job guys."
"...mud on my windshield leaving pit road."
After Ward Burton's wreck, "There's a lot of sh-- out there. We need to blow the track. There's oil dry and paper and everything. The track is too d--- fast to be driving around in debris."
After a splash n' go pit stop, "What the h--- did we just do right there? I think we made a huge mistake."
And if anyone can interpret
this, please email me:
Billy Willburn: "Rusty, you're P-2, P-2"
Rusty: "Oh, that's not as bad as I thought"
(Update: Was told this means that he came out of the pits in 2nd
position. Mom confirmed that this was after the above mentioned
pitstop, so it makes perfect sense.)
After the race was over, Mom and I hung out in the garage and watched the teams pull the cameras and telemetry off the cars. Rusty apparently was having some kind of problem with one of his shocks or springs, and the team took some time to figure out what the problem was before they loaded it up in the hauler. We weren't interested in going to victory lane. The crowd was already pretty thick when the race still had a lot of laps to go, and we figured we wouldn't be able to see much of anything anyway.
Was that not the UGLIEST trophy you've ever seen? It's an embarrassment to every Texan!
After a 30-minute walk to our car, we spent a few minutes unloading our pockets before we tried to leave the parking lot. Less than an hour later, we were off the speedway property and on our way home. The traffic throughout the entire weekend was the best of any race I have ever attended. I think the new "Dale Earnhardt Way" overpass made a huge difference, as did the fact that the Fort Worth Police Department was not trying to micro-manage the whole thing. They just sat back and watched the cars go. I don't think we were ever stopped for more than 5 minutes at a time.
Anyway, that's my UCAP. Hope you liked it. Now I've got to go bake a cake for the sweet, sweet guy who gave us those passes! See ya next year!