Jacksonville International Raceway – Jacksonville, FL (oval & roval) – Lifetime tracks #2,873 & 2,874

For a YouTube video of the racing…click HERE.

 

Miami International Autodrome – Miami Gardens, FL – Lifetime track #2,875

For a YouTube video of the racing…click HERE

 

 

Wanna go to the really big event? Something like Formula One? Think it’s too expensive? I’m always going to be here to explain exactly how you can go to the big event when you have the proper travel strategies. You good with that?

 

It’s the first week of May. I’m heading out on my 11th trackchasing trip of 2023. I’m off to a decent start. Entering this weekend, I’ve seen racing at 20 tracks for the very first time this year. That’s what trackchasing is all about.

 

My plan for this weekend was to run down to Jacksonville, Florida to see some racing on both an oval and a roval on Saturday night. Then depending upon flight availability and the weather forecast I would fly into Montreal, Pittsburgh, or Washington DC. As you know by reading my Trackchaser Reports, my plans are almost always “fluid”.

 

Next Thursday, Carol and I will be heading to Tokyo, Japan. We’ve got a big trip planned there. As she made final preparations for her visit to Asia I wanted to sneak in one more domestic weekend of trackchasing. To celebrate on the eve of the trip to Japan we drove two cars over to In-N-Out Burger in our hometown of San Clemente. There we enjoyed a nice supper (Yes! That’s my photo) at just about the finest hamburger fast food place on the planet.

 

 

In order to save a little bit of time and a little bit of money I wanted to fly overnight from Los Angeles to Orlando, Florida home of Disneyworld. This would save me a night of hotel expenses and a day of rental car expenses. These savings would be reinvested into the expected cost of Sunday’s World Formula 1 race ticket.

 

By the way, did you know that in 1972 when Disneyworld had only been open for three months Carol and I honeymooned in Orlando and at Disneyworld? It’s a small world, isn’t it? Get it? See what I did there?

 

 

SATURDAY

 

I landed in Orlando at 4:40 a.m. on Saturday morning. That was 1:40 a.m. California time. It was almost as if I hadn’t really slept at all on Friday night. It was more like I had just stayed up a little later on a Friday night at home.

 

 

I didn’t want to pick up my rental car until 10 a.m. this morning. My plan was to return the car by 10 a.m. on Monday. Waiting to pick up the car for about five hours after I landed would save the cost of one day of car rental. Yes, I was now expected to return the car to Orlando and fly home on Monday to Southern California. I would no longer be flying north, but I would be driving south. I’ll tell you about that or just a moment.

 

I had five hours to kill from the time I landed until the time I needed my rental car. I elected to make some very special arrangements. I stopped off at the “Club at MCO”. This is an airline club inside the Orlando airport.

 

 

This airline club is part of my Priority Pass membership. There would be no charge for me to enter the club and have breakfast.

 

These airline clubs are a great place to get away from the crowds at the airport. Orlando surely has the crowds. I couldn’t recall having seen so many people trying to get through airport security as I did this morning just as I was arriving.

 

In the club, I grabbed a better-than-average breakfast. Using a QR code at my table I ordered scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, and more. I supplemented this with some really good bagels and cream cheese and jelly. Then I slept for nearly 2 hours over in the corner of the club and out of the way.

 

 

Today I will be renting my car from Hertz. I guess they are my new go-to rental car agency since I lost my National Car Rental sponsorship. Today I picked up a Toyota Camry, which is exactly what I would have done if I were renting from National. However, the cars at Hertz seem to have a lot more miles on their odometers than at National. Today’s Camry had been driven just a little bit more than 59,000 miles. I couldn’t remember having a rental car with that much mileage on it in a long time.

 

From Orlando I made the 2 1/2 hour drive up toward Jacksonville. I really wanted to find a place to sleep for another hour or two. That spot turned out to be in Daytona Beach right across the street from the famous Daytona International Speedway.

 

When I woke up I still had a little bit of extra time. I decided to head to a nearby Regal (Hollywood) movie theater. I have the Regal Unlimited MoviePass which for $23.99 a month allows me to see as many movies as I want at Regal theaters. It was surprising to me that this same Regal card benefit sells for only $18.99 a month in Florida. I may have to investigate that! I saw a new movie release titled “Love Again”. It was your classic romantic comedy of my favorite genre.

 

 

Normally I avoid toll roads. However, in Florida, there are a lot of toll roads. They seem to be on the better routes. That being the case I elected to go with the Hertz toll road option. They charged me $13.99 per day for unlimited tool usage. I don’t know if that was a financial benefit or not. In today’s world, most of these toll roads don’t have any real people collecting tolls so you can’t pay cash.

 

 

Information and access are key to my trackchasing hobby. One of the ways I get information is through people on the ground near the tracks I plan to visit. Facebook and Facebook Messenger make this process much easier and better.

 

 

A few weeks ago, I “bumped” into a fellow by the name of David Furtado using Facebook Messenger. David is the president of the Florida Dirt Legend Series racing club. He spent quite a bit of time explaining to me what their group was all about. They would be racing at the Jacksonville International Raceway tonight. What made my visit to JIR so intriguing to me was the track’s race plan. They would race on Jacksonville’s dirt oval track as well as their dirt ROVAL track. If you don’t know, a roval is a course that incorporates an oval and elements of a road course…thus a roval!

 

I also had a chance to talk on the phone with Kyle, JIR owner and promoter. Kyle has been the owner of Jacksonville International Raceway for about five years. He has been very instrumental in bringing this track back from the dead. They race on multiple days each week with go-karts, micro sprints, legends, and side-by-sides.

 

Jacksonville International Raceway is the former Maxville Motor Speedway. Maxville was on my radar for more than 20 years. I could never find a race date when they were hosting karts that would count within the trackchasing rules. That outage was going to be corrected tonight.

 

As soon as I pulled into the track both Kyle and David were there to greet me. I guess they were anticipating my arrival. I was very much looking forward to meeting them and seeing the kind of racing JIR would have tonight. They didn’t charge me anything for a pit wristband. I had brought along a couple of souvenir Randy Lewis Racing trackchasing T-shirts for my new friends.

 

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was expecting from the Jacksonville International Raceway. I can tell you this. JIR exceeded my expectations. Car counts weren’t huge but the racing was competitive. There were five legends on hand in addition to small fields of 4-6 cars in three different divisions of micro-sprint type of racing.

 

It was interesting to talk to one fan tonight. He was telling me about a young driver from the famous racing Reutimann family. He mentioned David Reutimann as being very well-known. Of course, David drove in the NASCAR Cup Series for several years. David won two NASCAR Cup races which is impressive. However, David’s dad, Buzzie, was probably the more successful driver. He’s still racing and winning at the age of 82!

 

They also had a class of what they called “Box stocks”. At most places where I’ve seen box stoxs race the division is for some form of caged go-kart. Tonight, the box stocks were what I lovingly call “Junk cars”. In my parlance, a junk car is a four-cylinder powered, inexpensive, very basic stock car. JIR only had two of those. One of them broke early on. The last one running did a few hot laps and that was it.

 

At the driver’s meeting, I was introduced as “the guy from California who travels all over seeing tracks”. Yes, a guy from California had hopped on a jet airplane and made his way to Jacksonville, Florida tonight. Whenever I get an introduction like that in front of the entire pit area, I know I’m going to get a chance to speak to a lot of people during the course of the night.

 

It’s been a really long time since I’ve met and talked with so many nice people at a single track. I’m going to guess that I spent 5-15 minutes talking to at least ten people individually.

 

 

I met a former driver named Richard tonight. I’m sorry I didn’t get his last name. Richard was a former sprint car driver from around Dallas, Texas. I really enjoyed talking to him. He had a lot of stories about his time with Steve Kinzer, Doug Wolfgang, and Jack Hewitt. He said the parties at Hewitt’s place in his hometown of Troy, Ohio were legendary. It was interesting to hear what he had to say about Karl Kinser!

 

I spent some time talking to one of the legends drivers who was driving car #15. I asked him why that car number. His answer was simple. When he bought the car it was car number 15! Nevertheless, he plans to change the number to 14 in the future because that was the car number of one of his boyhood favorites. He and I had a nice discussion regarding the politics of America and the craziness that comes with all of that.

 

It was fun talking to David Furtado. We had a lot in common. David was there with his 79-year-old father. Their hometown track before they moved down to Florida was the Seekonk Speedway up in Massachusetts.

 

 

I really enjoyed meeting Jared Furtado, David’s son, as well. He was a bright young man. Jared’s been driving legends cars for a couple of years. He told me that a basic race-ready legend car might go for 15,000 and for as much as 25,000 for more top-of-the-line equipment.

 

 

Jared also told me that he raced on one set of tires for nine races in a single season without having to buy new tires. Why did he do that? He said the reason was that he didn’t have any money for new tires! Next week Jared is going to be driving over to Charlotte which is the headquarters for legends car manufacturing. Jared plans to get a new car to race on paved tracks.

 

 

As I say, it seemed like at every turn I was stopping and talking with one person or another. These folks all had their own interesting race-hobby stories. I was anxious to hear what they all had to say.

 

 

The program ran a little long. I arrived at 6 p.m. I hoped to get out of there by 9 p.m. I had made a hotel reservation three hours south in Melbourne, Florida. However, things ran late. I didn’t get out of the track until after 11 p.m. and ended up checking into my hotel a bit past 2 a.m. Those are late hours considering I flew overnight on an airplane last night.

 

 

I didn’t see anyone actually selling food and drink at the track last night. I did notice a menu board in the women’s restroom. Don’t ask me how I saw that! I didn’t have the courage to walk in and see if they were selling anything!

 

To get something to eat I did something I can’t ever recall doing and that’s saying something considering I’ve been to nearly 3,000 tracks. I walked across a four-lane highway to a convenience store within yards of the Jacksonville International Raceway. The two guys inside the “Maxville Food Mart” were an interesting duo. They immediately recognized that I “wasn’t from around here”.

 

 

They were somewhat incredulous that I had come all the way from California to see racing at the Jacksonville International Raceway. Their surprise seemed to turn to understanding when I told them I was also going to the Miami Grand Prix. In point of fact, the main purpose of this trip WAS to see racing at JIR. The race in Miami was just a “throw-in” after I got to Florida. The guys in the store were “street smart”. They had some very creative ideas on how I could handle tonight’s hotel reservation! My grocery order consisted of two cans of Vienna sausages and a Pepsi Zero Sugar.

 

Most of the racing was done on the oval tonight. During the oval feature two of the legends cars crashed. They were out for the night. That left just three cars to race on the roval. Then at the last minute, David’s legends car #11 was involved in a collision, breaking a spindle on his car.

 

 

When the cars came into the pits from the oval feature, someone in the pit area says “Let’s load ‘em up. We’re finished. We’ve only got two cars left.” That’s when Jared Furtado, still sitting in the cockpit of his car after winning the oval feature yelled, “No way.! We’re racing on the roval. This guy came all the way from California to see a race on the roval and he’s going to see it.” That sealed the roval deal!

 

While the remaining classes finished their oval feature racing David and his crew worked feverishly repairing the spindle on his damaged legends car. They made it just in time to join the three-car roval field.

 

It was a good race. At one point or another, all three of the drivers lead the feature event. A young driver by the name of Marcus was driving the black car number 51. He told me earlier that he had finished in second place five straight times. I told him the roval just might be his opportunity for a feature win.

 

Marcus was leading with just one lap to go. There was a collision between Marcus and David. This allowed Jared to come from third place on the last lap and capture his second feature race win of the night. There was a little tension in the pit area afterward. There’s always going to be disappointment when people are serious about whatever competition they happen to be in.

 

As I say it was fun to meet everybody. That’s Marcus, David, and Jared above. I was operating on very little sleep. I wasn’t gonna get much more sleep. Tonight, the icing on this particular cake was the idea that I was able to see two tracks in one location. There was really only one thing that topped that. I got to meet and talk with so many great people.

 

 

When I left on this trip, I had planned to fly from Orlando up north to Montreal, Pittsburgh, or Washington D.C. I had rental cars reserved in all of those locations just in case. Then somewhere in the midst of it all I learned that the Miami Grand Prix for World Formula One was happening this weekend. Miami was about six hours south of Jacksonville. I soon had a NEW plan!

 

 

SUNDAY

 

I won’t lie to you. I am not a fan of Formula One. I’ve seen racing at four locations with Formula One. Those are Las Vegas and the countries of India, Singapore, and South Korea (above with some of the folks I met). Formula One racing is a good source of some first-time-ever trackchasing country visits, which is why I chose those foreign venues.

 

F1 is very expensive to attend as a spectator. Tickets commonly start at $500 and go up from there per person. A Formula One race is more of an “event” than a race. Wherever you are seated you are only going to see the cars race past you for a few seconds. Then they go out of sight. That’s not my kind of race spectating.

 

 

Because I hadn’t planned to attend this race at all I didn’t have a ticket. Even if I had planned to go I would still have shown up on Sunday morning without a ticket.

 

At the very last minute, I mentioned my F1 plan to a buddy of mine, Boris Miljevic, a native of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Boris and I have hung out all over Europe. I first met him in Austria. He and his crew turned Carol and me onto the beautiful Red Bull “Hangar-7” museum (above) in Salzburg, Austria. I’ve been to Boris’ boyhood home in Bosnia. He and I have had dinner in Croatia and trackchased in Hungary, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

Boris, a European race driver, has a lot of contacts in the European racing world. He told me that one of his friends who was already in Miami might be able to score a ticket for me. We went down the route to see if that might work. It didn’t. I was on my own. Nevertheless, a big thanks to Boris for giving it a try.

 

My plan was Simply to show up at the Miami Grand Prix carrying a simple 5” x 7” sign. That sign is like gold to me. That sign and others just like it have scored me a lot of tickets at venues literally all over the world, including the South Korea F1 Grand Prix.

 

 

The weather on Sunday was going to be Florida beautiful as in 82° with no rain in the forecast. There were a lot of big white, puffy clouds scattered across a bright blue sky.

 

 

In today’s world of technology, most sporting venues have gone from paper tickets to electronic tickets. That’s a little bit of a problem for me when I’m trying to use my sign!

 

In the old days someone might have an extra ticket, see my sign that reads “Need 1” and make a deal with me. They had an extra ticket. I needed a ticket. We would negotiate for a moment or two. I would give them cash. They would give me a paper physical ticket.

 

 

Now people have their tickets on their “phone”. Some people aren’t as comfortable transferring an electronic ticket as they would have been giving me a paper ticket. I operate with several personal philosophies. One is the idea that if you “don’t ask you don’t get”. When does it hurt to ask? Almost never.

 

 

Another personal philosophy is “I’ll figure it out”. Today I arrived at one of the world’s biggest and most popular sporting events. People had bought their tickets and made their plans a year ago. Me? I thought of the idea of coming to the Miami Grand Prix two days ago. I came without a ticket to a sold-out event. I would ask for a ticket just minutes before the race was scheduled to begin. I would figure it out!

 

 

There’s no doubt about it. Attending a World Formula One auto race the way I do it is definitely an adventure. To fully appreciate the experience, sit down tighten those belts and try to imagine doing this yourself.

 

Formula One has a lot in common with soccer. Both of those sports are extremely popular outside of the United States, but not nearly as popular inside the United States. There have been periods of years and years where Formula One didn’t race in America at all. Now in 2023, they have races in Austin, Miami, and soon-to-be Las Vegas.

 

I saw F1 compete in Las Vegas, all the way back in 1981. The race was held in the Caesar’s Palace parking lot! F1 only did that in Las Vegas for a couple of years. Then Formula One was gone from the states for a long time.

 

 

Since that race in Las Vegas in 1981 this is the history of F1 holding events in the U.S.

 

Circuit of the Americas – Austin, Texas – 2012 to present

 

Detroit Street Circuit – Detroit, Michigan – 1982-1988

 

Fair Park Street Circuit – Dallas, Texas – 1984

 

Miami International Autodrome – Miami Gardens, Florida – 2022 – present

 

Indianapolis Motor Speedway – Speedway, Indiana – 2000-2007

 

Long Beach Street Circuit – Long Beach, California – 1976-1983

 

Phoenix Street Circuit – Phoenix, Arizona – 1989-1991

 

What do most of the U.S. F1 racing events have in common? Most didn’t last long. We’ll see how long the U.S. will continue to have three F1 races. Did you know that Stephen Ross owner of the Hard Rock Stadium and the Miami Dolphins personally funded the Miami Grand Prix? That must have cost a pretty penny.

 

For some ungodly reason, a ticket to see an F1 race is very expensive. I’m talking about prohibitively expensive. The beginning price for an F1 ticket starts at about $500 U.S. and sometimes more! NASCAR is the most popular racing organization in the United States. You can easily get a ticket to one of their races for less than $100.

 

Today’s racing venue was formally called the Miami International Autodrome. In point of fact, MIA was a race course laid out on a temporary basis around the Hard Rock Stadium, where the Miami Dolphins play professional football.

 

 

I showed up today without a ticket and without a parking pass. I use two main online ticket brokers for my sports and entertainment tickets. Those are StubHub and SeatGeek.

 

StubHub shows their ticket prices without taxes and fees. On the other hand, SeatGeek lists their ticket prices including taxes, fees, and any other charges that might exist.

 

 

I was thinking that closer to the race the prices for the race tickets might decline. I was wrong about that. Nearing race time the tickets were actually higher priced than they had been all week when I checked them.

 

Today the least expensive single ticket option for me with all taxes and fees included was just above $600 U.S. The cheapest parking I found online was $80. There was no way I was going to pay prices like that.

 

 

I have a trackchasing budget. OK, that’s not exactly true. I don’t really have a budget for what I spend on trackchasing. At the same time, I know what the value of things is. What the value of things is turns out to be my trackchasing budget.

 

 

When I arrived near the stadium, I tried to park in one of the numbered parking lots. I was turned away. The parking lot attendant informed me that people parking in these areas had paid for their parking in advance. Of course, I have not done that.

 

 

A nice enough older residential neighborhood is in place around the stadium. They don’t have bars on the windows so that makes it a nice enough neighborhood in my mind.

 

I found a city park and swimming pool that was closed for construction. I pulled up on the grass and parked next to the fence. I was hoping that no neighbors were watching and were ready to call a towing company. I wouldn’t know for sure about that until I returned after the race. The cheapest parking going for $80 online. I didn’t pay anything for parking today.

 

 

It was a pretty good hike from my parking spot to the stadium. I didn’t mind that at all. I needed to get in four miles of walking in today anyway. This was only going to help me. This situation reminds me of another of my life’s adages. “Everyone gets a chance to choose their reaction to the events they encounter”. I would end up walking more than a mile to the stadium. Did I think of that as a problem or a benefit? It was a benefit!

 

 

They did have a series of young men on pedal cabs offering people rides from the parking lots to the stadium. I flagged down one of those guys just to ask about his price. He told me it was $30, but he would be willing to do it for 25. I passed. I walked. That didn’t seem like a good value to me.

 

 

My plan was to find a heavy pedestrian area where people were walking into the track. I would stand there with my “Need One“ sign for all to see. Sooner or later, someone would come up who had an extra ticket. Maybe they wouldn’t mind selling it to a fellow like myself.

 

In the past when tickets were made of paper or light cardboard, I could usually get a ticket within five minutes of raising my sign. Nowadays with electronic tickets, it does take a little bit longer. Today it might have taken me 15 or 20 minutes. I had a few people come up and make inquiries.

 

There are always going to be some jokesters who see my sign and feel the need to comment. My sign says “Need One”.  A young woman stopped to ask “What do you need”? I wasn’t absolutely sure whether she was totally clueless or trying to make a joke. Nevertheless, she didn’t look or act like she would be date-worthy.

 

 

Another fellow came up and told me that if I paid him $2,000, he would be willing to give me his ticket. I immediately replied that I was willing to pay $5,000. This almost stopped him in his tracks! He thought he was playing a joke on me, and the joke was on him!

 

Some very subtle ticket scalpers came up and started asking questions. These were professionals. They were not here to see the race. They were here to make money buying and selling tickets. The scalper’s first question was what was I willing to spend? I told him $150. This answer was so discouraging that he immediately walked away without comment.

 

 

A little while later another scalper came up and asked me if I was looking for a good seat. That is code for “Are you looking for an expensive seat”? I told him I wasn’t looking for a good seat. He walked away, shaking his head.

 

 

Then a father/daughter duo approached me. The father didn’t speak any English. His 40-year-old daughter was bilingual in English and Spanish. They were willing to sell me a ticket for $600. They told me that was what they paid for it. I had news for them. What THEY paid for their ticket had no impact on what I would pay for their ticket! It don’t work that way in this business.

 

I told them there was no way that I could pay $600. I offered $200. The daughter translated my response back to her dad. If her dad was in the mafia I think his response in Spanish might not have been good for me. Yes, I could see he was immediately put off by my outlandish suggestion of $200. I think she came back with $400 but by then they were ready to move on.

 

 

Since I wasn’t getting a lot of responses I went back to the father/daughter combo and reminded them that they had offered $400 and I had offered $200. Maybe we should just split the difference at $300. Again, this was translated by the daughter to the dad and immediately rejected.

 

I tried to point out in the most fair-mannered way that I possibly could that they were missing a last-chance opportunity. They were at the gate ready to go inside. Nobody was buying tickets at that spot. If they didn’t take my $300, they were going to walk in with nothing. They, meaning the father, were not convinced by my very logical argument. I saw them walk into the stadium without selling their extra ticket. Sometimes people are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.

 

 

It wasn’t long before another fellow came up to me. He had a ticket to sell. He asked me what I was willing to pay. I don’t like to make the first offer. That’s not how I was trained in negotiating. Nevertheless, I did it with a lowball price of $150.

 

 

He told me he had paid $600 but was willing to take $400. I told him I couldn’t possibly do that. That’s called the “explosive no” in negotiating. I decided to raise my offer from $150 to $200. We were negotiating now! This was the best part of my day!

 

 

The fellow lowered his asking price of $400 down to $300. We were $100 apart. You probably know where this is going at this point. We settled on $250 which was a gigantic savings from the least expensive ticket price offered online of $600.

 

 

I suggested that we walk in together. When we were past the ticket taker, I would pay him. That is how things are commonly done in the new world of electronic ticket buying and selling. He thought that was fine with this idea.

 

Today I was wearing cargo shorts that had pockets inside the pockets of my pants. I had stuffed every one of the pockets with a certain amount of cash. That way if I needed $100 or $250 or $500 I knew which pockets to go to without exposing my entire cargo shorts net worth.

 

 

I was only working with two forms of currency. Those were $100 bills and $20 bills. Rather than act cheap, after I just bought a ticket at dramatically below market price, I pulled out $260 and told my new best friend to “keep the change”.

 

He was happy he had unloaded his ticket at any price at the last minute. I was happy that I had procured a ticket at a decent price at the last minute. I suggested we get our photo together. The young man from New York was happy to do it.

 

 

Now I was inside with a good hour and a half or more to spare. The place was packed. I’m thinking it was a sellout, but that’s just a guess.

 

There were quite a few women in the audience today. Many of them were dressed as if they were attending the Kentucky Derby with provocative outfits and hats of all kinds. I would say most of the people were in the 25-45 age range. I saw very few people in my age bracket. That’s a true statement with just about everything that I do in life. Why is that?

 

 

When I bought my ticket, I didn’t even ask the guy where the seat was located. It didn’t really matter. I was here as a trackchaser. I simply wanted to count the Miami International Autodrome as my 2,875th-lifetime venue.

 

My friend from New York had texted me the ticket details including seat location. I looked at my phone and found that I was in the North Beachside grandstand. If I wasn’t going to be at the start-finish line, which is where I was with Carol at the F1 race in India, then I didn’t really care where I was seated.

 

 

I pointed out that I am not a fan of Formula One. I don’t get it. I don’t get soccer either. The fact that I don’t get it doesn’t mean that Formula One and soccer are not important and entertaining. However, they are only important and entertaining for the most part to people who don’t live in the U.S.

 

Concession pricing was beyond crazy. Way beyond crazy. A simple as described on the menu, “plain hog dog” was $13. The same hotdog with chili and cheese was $19. If you wanted to cheese on your hamburger it was an extra three dollars. Oh my.

 

Souvenir pricing was equally outrageous. Hats with the names of the various automobile manufacturers participating in F1 started at $90 and went up from there. Shirts were priced in the $150-$280 range. I have never ever seen prices this high for souvenir merchandise.

 

 

When I got to my seat, I was happy to note that the grandstand had a covered roof. My seat location was in the N10 section, row 25, seat 19. It was shady there with a nice breeze. That was helpful on a mainly sunny 85° day.

 

 

F1 racing is conducted exclusively on road courses. I am not a fan of road courses. Why? I want to see the racing all the time. You can do that with an oval track. However, with a road course, with all kinds of twisting turns, it is common to be able to see very little of the race.

 

I’m going to guess that I have never seen as little of the actual race as I saw the day. Today’s race layout was similar to what I saw at a street course in Durban, South Africa. The cars went by my position on a piece of track that was primarily a semi-circle. This was a SMALL section of the track. The cars covered the distance in five seconds. A full lap took about 90 seconds. This meant that I was seeing racing on about 5% of the track from my position. I paid $250 for the privilege and that was a bargain.

 

 

Today’s rate would be 57 laps and distance. The track was 3.36 miles in length. That meant the entire covered 192 miles. I would not have been disappointed if they ran only 20 laps. Boring!

 

The fans were crazy for the first several laps. The place was packed. When the cars roared past for “our” five seconds of viewing the fans stood up and cheered. Then they sat down until the cars came by again. This happened for the first 10 or 15 laps. I thought the whole experience was kind of funny. What would these fans do if they got a chance to see the Chili Bowl or sprint cars at Ascot Park? No, I don’t like Formula One in the least.

 

 

I don’t like Formula One because you can’t see virtually any of the racing. I don’t like Formula One because their pricing is seven clicks beyond reasonable.

 

 

Lots of people immediately think of inflation when they see higher prices. That’s usually not the case. Higher prices come from a lack of supply and heavy demand or both. Often when folks don’t really understand finance they want to blame some individual or some organization for inflation. People like to blame people or organizations for anything they don’t like including their sore back and ingrown toenail. These folks need to better educate themselves on what causes things like inflation…but they won’t.

 

One hundred dollars for a baseball-style cap or two hundred dollars for a shirt? That’s not inflation. That’s charging what the traffic will bear. No one could price their hats at $100 each if there wasn’t a strong enough demand of people willing to part with $100. I think people in the demographic that I was seeing today are more willing to do that than most other groups.

 

I was a happy camper when we got to lap 57. I had no idea who was leading. Other than Lewis Hamilton I couldn’t have told you the name of one driver in the entire field when I showed up today. I didn’t know which drivers were in which cars. All of those outages were on me. However, if I had known the answer to these questions, I don’t think I would’ve thought much of the racing today anyway.

 

Now I had a pretty good hike back to where I parked my car. My grandstand seat was on the other side of the venue so it took some to get back to my car. I had taken some photos of the street signs when I headed toward the racetrack so I could find my car when the racing was finished.

 

 

I didn’t really know for sure if my car would have been towed away by now or not. I’ve had my car towed a few times. Most recently was a couple of years ago in Italy. Carol and I parked our car on a remote side street. Then we went to have lunch. Lo and behold when we returned our car was nowhere to be found. That was an expensive situation but we did get to meet some nice locals and even enjoyed our interaction with the police! To this day I think a neighbor ratted us out.

 

My favorite time of the week to watch racing is Sunday afternoon. I have no idea why that is. Most of the racing that I’ve seen in my lifetime has been on Saturday night. However, I always enjoy watching a race on Sunday afternoon and then heading back to my hotel after a full day of activity on Sunday evening.

 

On this day I would drive more than 200 miles straight up the Florida Turnpike. I had reserved a nice Sheraton hotel in Orlando, Florida for the ungodly low price of $64. Sunday night is usually the slowest night of the week in the hotel business. Tomorrow I will figure out a way to fly from Orlando to Los Angeles.

 

I have no idea if I made a good financial decision or not when I paid $13.99 a day for an unlimited toll pass in Florida. I’m thinking I might’ve done better than breakeven but I don’t know that for sure.

 

 

I will say this. The people who drive on the Florida turnpike are the craziest idiots and morons that I have seen in recent memory. They speed to the high heavens and make lane switches on the two lanes in each direction highway by cutting off one driver and just missing another. Absolutely bonkers.

 

As I begin to wrap up my Florida trackchasing weekend, I was most pleased that I have seen three tracks in two days. This brings my Florida lifetime trackchasing total to 79 tracks. That’s good enough for a #1 ranking in the Sunshine State. I have a number one trackchasing rank in just over half of the 50 states in the country.

 

 

MONDAY

 

I had a challenging time finding a flight was Orlando to Los Angeles today. I missed about six flights until I finally found a seat. I was seriously contemplating the idea that I might not make it back home today at all.

 

I did find a seat guaranteeing my arrival back home on Monday. Carol and I will leave on a jet airplane for Tokyo, Japan on Thursday. We have some big plans for Japan and afterward as well. I hope that if you have the time you’ll see how all of that went. I’ll tell you all about it in my next Trackchaser Report.

 

Randy Lewis

Just another senior citizen running around Florida.