Mammoth Blog

Well, I've just ticked one off my personal list by taking in a NASCAR race in the US of A.

And if you are a motorsport nut like me I have only three words of advice: Go do it!

For my adventure, I chose last weekend's Bank of America 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina - deep in NASCAR's southern heartland and home to several teams and drivers.

I was joined at the floodlit night race by 149,999 other raucous fans. Yessiree, like most other things in America, NASCAR is BIG.

It was easy to see why. The eardrum-blowing noise and sheer spectacle of 43 V8 leviathans thundering around Charlotte's 1.5mile banked oval was, as they say, awesome.

Cars bombed round the bankings two or three wide, inches apart at up to 200mph.

There were metal-crunching crashes, clouds of blue tyre smoke, showers of sparks as body panels ground against the perimeter wall, cars exploding into life after frantic pit stops and flashes of blurred colour shimmering under Charlotte's megawatts.

And though the racing purist may baulk at the frequent interruptions caused by shunts and debris on the track, all of which routinely bunch up the pack behind the safety car, no one can deny the subsequent re-starts are just as electric as the original.

The fans - much better behaved and informed than their mythical redneck image would suggest - stand up from their grandstand seats for each re-start and watch on their feet for five laps or so before settling dutifully back down.

They are fiercely partisan and back their favourite drivers to the hilt.

They holler and wave their caps at good guys like local boy Dale Earnhardt Jnr (wo!) and Tony 'Smoke' Stewart. And they lay into bad guys like Kyle Busch (boo!) and Colombian ex-Formula 1 star Juan Pablo Montoya - a target because, well heck, he ain't American.

At one point the friend I was with - an American named Barry Nakell who was also a NASCAR rookie - asked his neighbour if Car No. 48 was being driven by reigning champ Jimmie Johnson.

The neighbour, decked out in the orange colours of Smoke's team, replied: 'Yeah, only his real name is Jimmie LOSER!!!!'

Then there are the priceless 'only in America' moments.

When the drivers were introduced one by one before the race, they tripped down a staircase to be greeted not by a VIP or celebrity, but by a bloke dressed as a giant spark plug.

A church minister bellowed an invocation thanking God 'for giving us this race and allowing us to live in the greatest country in the world'.

The country singer Jessica Simpson, who gave us an enjoyable pre-race concert, didn't do so well with the Star Spangled Banner, which she ruthlessly murdered.

And after all that we got a race lasting nearly four hours with constant shuffles of order and a gripping finish.

It was won by Jeff Burton in the 'AT&T Mobility' Chevrolet, who thus closed the points gap to Jimmie Loser in NASCAR's Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

I'll leave it to my mate Barry to sum it all up.

'It was,' he said with a grin as wide as the Atlantic, 'one hell of an experience.'

As the church minister would say: 'Amen to that. source>>>