Nascar Sprint Cup Racing At Texas – Chaz’s Review [PHOTOS]

Nascar Sprint Cup Racing at Texas this past weekend was just as I expected - awesome!  This past Saturday (April 9th) I took my brother for his birthday, along with my wife and my brother's wife.  The race itself was another good one and we all had a great time, however, it was at the end of the race when things got a little hectic.  My review of the Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway after the jump.

Another race at Texas Motor Speedway is in the books with Matt Kenseth winning the Sprint Cup race this last Saturday (April 9) for his first win in over two years.  The race itself was uneventful as far as cautions were concerned.  In fact, there were only a total of five cautions the whole race and the last green flag run was 114 laps, but that is cool because that made a lot of green flag racing.  Kenseth lead 169 of the 334 laps.

All that said, it would not have mattered who won, or how many cautions or wrecks there were, it was a great time as always.  What made it better, was that for the first time, they raced under the lights.  This would be a problem for us later as I'll explain.

We arrived at the track about 3:30pm which was later than I had wanted to be there but  preparation for the race takes a little time -especially if you doing a little tailgating. You have to make sure you have everything like, obviously, your tickets, sunscreen if you burn, lots of water, Tylenol, binoculars, snacks, ice, camera, and, of course, the cooler.  A lot of people will camp and be grilling out and basically partying it up.  After all, Nascar tailgating is second to none.   So, you just have to be prepared.

So, we did a little tailgating, then went in for the race.  Three Doors Down performed the pre-race show so we checked that out and then proceeded back to the car for some last minute tailgating and to grab the coolers.

One piece of advice I would offer you, is to make sure you know where you are parked before heading back into the track - especially if it is a night race.  This piece of information is something we should have heeded ourselves.

Our seats were at turn 1 about 40 rows up, so we had an excellent vantage point.  Just remember, when you watch a race at Texas Motor Speedway, try to make sure to get tickets that are not too close to the track itself because you actually see better the further up you sit.  Our tickets were perfect! We could actually feel the cars passing by each lap and binoculars were not needed.

The green flag dropped, and the pole sitter, David Regan,  led the field off for the start of the Samsung Mobile 500.  It's like a shot of adrenaline when they drop the green flag.  The roar of the engines and the sound of the crowd really cannot be compared with any other sport.  Couple that with a few beverages and it's literally a big ass party up in the stands with cars whizzing by from time to time. Even though the race is about 4-5 hours long, it goes by fast and before you know it, the race is over and thousands of people stream out of the stands to get to their vehicles.

Here's where it sort of falls apart for us.

As I mentioned, it is always a good idea to know where you park.  Texas Motor Speedway is huge and if you have no idea where you parked, you could be walking around for hours! Also, when you try to judge, by distance and landmarks of where you parked, it's difficult because the complex is arced so your vantage point is a little off if you standing in front of the complex trying to figure out what gate you are in front of.

I could have sworn I knew where we parked.  Between gates 2-3 about the length of a football field back - or so I thought.

We get out of the race and head towards where we thought we parked, but nothing looked familiar to us.   "Let's split up and look", my brother says.  At the time, that seemed like a good idea.  The only problem with that is that because we had been at the track for some time and had been texting and snapping pictures, etc, none of us had any battery power left on our phones.  This would prove to suck later.

We split up and sure enough, that is when my phone completely dies. I tried to estimate, by looking back at the track from the parking lot, what gate we were at and then proceeded to make sort of a grid pattern through the parking lot to cover as much area as possible in our search.  Meanwhile, we have no idea where my brother and his wife are, and  no phone to call them with.  We searched for 2 or more in that parking lot and it wasn't until it  had emptied out a lot that off in the far distance, I could see where we were parked.  Man, we had been searching this whole time and were literally 100 yards off!

So, car found, but now where the heck is my brother and his wife?  We searched for them for another hour or so before we found them on the other side of the track.

Now, the race ended sometime around 11pm or so.  We didn't have everybody together and in the car until about 2:45 a.m.  So, it took  3 hours and 45 minutes to actually leave the track after the race had officially ended.  Yeah, we're smart!

So, that was our experience this time at Texas Motor Speedway.  I'll post a gallery of the race in a bit.  In the meantime, here are the top 10 finishers at Texas:

1. Matt Kenseth

2. Clint Bowyer

3. Carl Edwards - who was actually sick

4. Greg Biffle

5. Paul Menard

6. Marcos Ambrose

7. David Regan

8. Jimmy Johnson

9. Dale Earnhardt Jr.

10. Kurt Busch

Again, we had a great time, but always remember where you park because it really did suck walking around aimlessly for hours  like dumb asses.

So, thanks for reading my review of the Nascar Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway.  Feel free to leave your comments and bash me for being stupid and not know where the heck my car was.