GMC Stadium at Stampede Park
Wanna see my YouTube video from the racing action today? Here’s the link.
Nitro RX rallycross racing from Calgary, Alberta
Some folks seem to think I’m pretty active for a fellow my age. If that is true, meaning some people think that and I actually am pretty active for my age, I’m going to conclude that’s a good thing. After you read today’s post, you can decide how you feel about that topic.
It is rare in my trackchasing hobby, that I will fly very far from home to see just one racing event. In general, when I am trackchasing, I don’t like to be gone overnight away from home unless I am being productive on the trackchasing trail. “Productive” means I am seeing a new track just about every full day that I am away from home. One exception to that would be when I make foreign trips to see racing in countries for the very first time.
Saturday, February 4, 2023.
I like to multitask. Carol tells me that multitasking is a waste of time because you can’t do any of the tasks very well if you are multitasking. I remind her that in life many of the tasks that we face don’t have to be done as well as the work you do on your college SAT. Often times good enough is simply good enough.
I begin the morning multitasking even though this was against Carol’s advice. I wasn’t multitasking with just two activities but three.
I drove eight minutes over to the San Clemente outlet mall. That’s where my Tesla supercharger is located. I plugged in my Tesla and began powerwalking for the next 40-50 minutes. I powerwalk every day for 60-80 minutes. I only powerwalk long enough at the shopping mall for my car to be fully charged.
On Saturday mornings, there’s a group called “Cars and Coffee” in San Clemente. Members and fans of this group bring their antique cars and performance cars to the huge shopping mall parking lot. While my car charged and while I powerwalked, I took photos of these beautiful machines on display. I thought my multitasking this morning went very well.
From there Carol and I made our way up to the campus of UCLA. We are season-ticket holders for UCLA basketball. Today we watched UCLA scorch the Washington State Cougars 76 to 52. The Bruins now have a record of 19-4.
A highlight of the game wasn’t the game itself, although that was great. Our son J.J. is a season-ticket holder at UCLA. Today J.J.’s high school friend Lonnie was joining him. We hadn’t seen Lonnie in a good long time. He has a job that allows him to travel and live all over the world. As a world traveler myself I can only admire Lonnie’s situation.
Carol and I had driven two cars up to Los Angeles to see the game. We NEVER do that. However, we had a plan in mind. Whenever you can’t understand something that I do just remember this. It is rare that my actions are not part of a bigger plan.
On the 75-mile one-way drive up to the game, we parked my car at the World Parking garage at LAX. I have had a smoking-hot trackchasing sponsorship for more than a decade. From the parking garage we hopped in Carol’s Newsmax-sponsored Lexus RX 350 and drove to the LAX terminal.
There I picked up the boarding pass that would take me from Los Angeles to Vancouver, British Columbia tonight. It was important to get my boarding pass now before the game. After the game when Carol dropped me off at LAX, depending on traffic, time would be of the essence.
When we had finished watching the UCLA basketball game, we hustled down the San Diego Freeway. Carol deposited me at the airport. From there, she would head back to our modest seaside cottage in San Clemente. I would hop on a nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Vancouver.
Airports, now that Covid is over, are packed. At LAX most of the low-cost fast food chains have been replaced with upscale eateries. I saw one place selling a cheeseburger, which probably included fries, for $23! I elected to go with an $11 sandwich at Jersey Mike’s which was huge.
There were several aspects of todays and tomorrow’s logistical plan that needed to all run very smoothly in order for this to be a successful trackchasing adventure. If just one of the movements didn’t work properly the trip would be toast.
When we landed in Vancouver I was able to clear border control much more easily than I did in Montreal a couple of weeks ago. The systems and kiosks developed in the past couple of years have made getting into Canada much easier.
My flight landed in Vancouver at 11 p.m. I was expecting to take a 6 a.m. flight tomorrow morning from Vancouver to Calgary, Alberta, Canada. There would be no time for me to stay in a hotel tonight.
That’s not a problem for me. I learned in United States Marine Corps boot camp, and lots of other places along the way, “Where there is a will there is the way”.
I would simply find a quiet section in the airport and sleep over a row of airline seats. As you can see from the photo above, that plan worked out well. I must say the cleaning crew was about as loud of a cleaning crew overnight as I’ve ever experienced in an airport.
You should know that I estimate that I have slept overnight in an airport for nearly 200 nights. This helps with the trackchasing budget numbers, doesn’t it? However, I never do this to save money. As you can see landing at an airport at 11 at night and having a 6 a.m. flight the next morning does not allow for the practical use of a traditional hotel.
Sunday, February 5, 2023
Today the NASCAR Cup Clash race was being held in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. I was passing on that show in order to come to Calgary, Alberta for the Nitro rallycross racing. The sanctioning group is named Nitro RX.
Last year the family and I went to the Coliseum in Los Angeles to see the Busch Clash race. I thought the event was outstanding. The vibe in the stadium was more that of a concert than a traditional stock car race. I saw that as a plus. I would consider the racing “event” at the Coliseum to be right up there with last year’s million dollar to win late model race at Eldora and the dirt race at Bristol. Those were three of the best racing experiences I’ve had probably ever.
Today’s racing at the GMC Stadium on the grounds of Stampede Park in Calgary was scheduled to begin at 12 noon. I landed in Calgary at about 8 a.m. I had a couple of hours to simply hang around the airport and get some computer paperwork done. There’s a lot of planning that goes into this and these down periods are great to stay on top of the planning. I do understand that I don’t plan quite as well after I have slept overnight, for just a few hours, on a row of airline terminal seats!
Today I will be watching the relatively new Nitro RX series. You may have heard of the driver and personality Travis Pastrana. He’s the man behind this new group. I was surprised to learn that Travis is entered in the upcoming Daytona 500.
Rallycross is a much bigger draw in Europe than it is in the United States. That is similar to the immense popularity of F1 racing in Europe where F1 is not a huge deal in the U.S. Maybe that’s why Nitro RX has now held a couple of events in Canada and one in England.
Rallycross racing is quite a bit different than traditional stock car/IndyCar/local racing in the United States. Rallycross races are much shorter and have far fewer entries in each race.
I got a new appreciation for rallycross racing when I made a trip to Sweden last year. I was able to see rallycross events at several tracks. My Swedish buddy Nicklas Åkerlund is an expert on rallycross. He gave me a better appreciation for this style of racing.
It was with this background that I paid $15 Canadian to park on the grounds of Stampede Park. Inside Stampede Park they hold the Calvary Stampede each July. The Calgary Stampede is a ten-day event, which bills itself as “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth”, attracts over one million visitors per year and features one of the world’s largest rodeos, a parade, midway, stage shows, concerts, agricultural competitions, chuckwagon racing, and First Nations exhibitions.
The Scotiabank Saddledome is also located on the grounds of Stampede Park. A few years ago, I was in Calgary for some trackchasing. I had the opportunity to see the Calgary Flames play a home game in the National Hockey League. That was a fun experience. I even bought the t-shirt!
I didn’t have a ticket for today’s racing. I didn’t expect that to be a problem. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting the crowd that was watching today’s racing to be nearly as large as it was. They had a lot of people in their huge grandstand. I’m going to guess there might’ve been 10,000 or so.
When I first noticed this Nitro RX racing date was going to be held in early February in Calgary at an outdoor stadium I was surprised. The weather up here can get pretty cold during that time of year. I think the promoters and the fans sort of lucked out today. The temperature was probably about 35° with not much wind. It could have just as easily been a 10° day with 20-mile-an-hour wind. I would come to find out Canadians were up for rallycross!
When I went in to buy a ticket I was amongst several other fans. They were in line to get their track entrance wristbands. I had a short conversation with the woman who was affixing wristbands to these people who already had their tickets. I was simply asking her when, where, and how much the tickets were going to be.
A young fellow standing in line and waiting to get his wristband heard our conversation. He told me he had a couple of people in his group who had bailed on him. He wanted to give me one of their tickets at no charge. That was nice of him. Soon he emailed me a screenshot of one of the tickets and I was into this major event for free!
The fellow’s name was Joshua. Once inside, I tracked Joshua down and bought him a beer. I was more than willing to buy his buddy a beer as well, but he told me that the cost of the two beers would be more than the value of the ticket he just gave me! I wouldn’t have cared. Joshua’s generosity had added to my story.
Joshua and I talked just a little bit. He was surprised I had come all the way from California to Calgary to see the Nitro RX race. I handed him my trackchasing business card. Joshua told me he had now met two famous people today. The first was Travis Pastrana, and now he had met the World’s #1 Trackchaser. It was nice talking with Joshua. I thanked him very much for his generosity in offering me a ticket.
My first experience at the event today was going into an enclosed indoor arena where all of the cars were pitted. As I said, this was night and day different from the rallycross racing I saw in Sweden.
The Nitro RX people just don’t have very many cars following their series. There are two groups or classes of race cars. The top group is actually an all-electric powered class of racers. This class is called “Group E”. With the growth of passenger electric cars, there are more and more major racing series going all electric.
The biggest ice racing sanctioning body in Europe is now all-electric. The Formula E series, which I’ve seen race in Saudi Arabia, competes all over the world is an all-electric Formula One type race series. Now Nitro RX has their top class being all-electric.
The secondary Nitro RX is called “Next”. This is a gasoline-powered division. For the two classes combined, they were only about 15 cars at the venue in total. That’s a very low car count even if traditional rallycross racing only starts a maximum of six cars in each race.
I grabbed some food and picked out a seat in the indoor arena. I sat back and watched the pit area action. I’ve been to a few of these racing events where the concessions are part of a “large arena” complex. The food is never good in these situations and it wasn’t very good today. I was longing for a piping hot serving of Canadian poutine. But where I was located in the paddock area none was to be found.
Soon I made my way out into the grandstand area which was 100% outdoors. As I mentioned, I was surprised at how large the crowd was. The stands were nearly full.
Despite so many people being there, I was able to find a seat where I could get some good photos and video of the rallycross racing. You’ll be able to see what I was experiencing by viewing my YouTube video.
The first several races I saw, had just two cars competing on a roval shaped course. The racing surface was snow and ice over ground. This surfaced made this an “ice race”. I added the location to my ever-growing base of 130 ice racing tracks where I’ve seen racing.
There were several parts that I didn’t care much for at today’s racing event. Pretty much half of the track was behind a huge grandstand. Fans could only really see racing on the portion of the track that passed by the spectator grandstands. This problem was alleviated just a little bit with a nice video scoreboard. With that, we could see what was happening on TV but not in person. That’s never ideal.
Of course, having only two cars in most of the races wasn’t all that entertaining. The announcers did a good job of making it sound as if we were watching the second coming of Christ but in reality, we were watching two cars race sometimes for just two laps. Oh my.
Trackchasing rules state that races that have only two competitors and are limited to two competitors, like drag racing, don’t count in the trackchasing hobby. Wait! Don’t even get me started on the rules of trackchasing. Why doesn’t trackchasing count? Don’t blame me. I didn’t make the rules. Neverthless, I didn’t think that silly rule applied to what I was watching today. The races weren’t limited to two competitors. It’s just that each heat race had only two competitors. There’s a difference.
There was also a reasonable amount of downtime between each race. They used this time to work on the track surface. Nevertheless, they did a pretty good job of sticking to their printed schedule.
The gas-powered NEXT main event had a total of just four competitors. You won’t see many feature races in any type of motor racing that offers only four drivers in the main event.
The cool thing about seeing rallycross racing in Sweden was that each paddock probably had 50-150 cars depending on the track I was visiting. They didn’t have any downtime between races. Most of the races had six cars, even if the racing distance was only four or five laps. I can’t wait to get back to Sweden to see some of that racing and maybe I will.
During the event, I was texting with Nicklas Åkerlund. He was watching the Nitro RX event on live stream in Sweden. It’s always fun to stay in touch with Nicklas, who really helped me out with my trip to Sweden last year.
At this point, I will ask you to take a look at my YouTube racing video. You’ll get a chance to see what I could see today inside the GMC Stadium at Stampede Park. I hope this rallycross racing series is a success. Several other similar operations have tried and failed with this model in the United States.
When I left the track I absolutely had to make a stop on the way back to the airport. Where would that be? I had to stop at a Tim Horton’s. I must confess. From the Tim Hortons store to the airline terminal, I ate all three of the donuts I bought. That’s sad.
When I returned my rental car, the guy told me that my expense was actually twice what I had contracted for. That took a couple of minutes to “work through” but in the end, he actually gave me a price that was a little bit less than what I was expecting originally. Often times it pays to pay attention.
This afternoon, I would fly from Calgary to Seattle and then from Seattle to Los Angeles. This meant in a space of about 26 hours or so I had flown from Los Angeles to Vancouver and then onto Calgary and was now returning from Calgary through Seattle to Los Angeles. To top it off I slept overnight on a row of airline terminal seats in a foreign country. Did I tell you I think of myself as an active individual?
I had about an hour-and-a-half layover in Seattle. This allowed me to go to one of my favorite Priority Pass restaurants and order a side order of Vietnamese pork and enough candy and cookies to just minorly exceed my $28 credit that comes from Priority Pass. The candy will store well. I’m sure it will come in handy on one of my future long-distance trips.
Today I had seen racing at my 16th different track in the somewhat rural and out-of-the-way province of Alberta. I have made 11 separate trips to Alberta to trackchase. My next nearest fellow competitor in Alberta has seen racing in just four locations.
When I arrived at LAX the one-mile walk back from the LAX airline terminal to my parking garage happened at about 11 p.m. If I had been just an hour later I could’ve gotten that one mile to count toward TOMORROW’S walking totals. As it was, I finished up with 7.9 miles of walking for the day, which seemed like enough for me.
Even though I didn’t absolutely need it, at a few minutes past midnight, I stopped at my hometown Tesla supercharger. I still had 30 miles of driving range. When there is not very much range left a Tesla will charge at a supercharger at a much faster rate than it will after having a charge level of 60% or more. Tonight, for 10 minutes, I charged at a rate of 425 mph. I slept during those ten minutes! Then I made a quick eight-minute drive back for a night of slumber in my own bedroom.
Considering that I only have about a dozen permanent ovals and road courses where I have not seen racing in the United States I’m doing pretty well so far. In 2023 I’ve seen racing at six tracks, five of which were outside of the United States. Four of those six tracks have never been seen by any other trackchaser. That’s surprising since people have been recording tracks seen for nearly 100 years. I’ll take that.
Oh, by the way. This coming weekend I plan to see some ice racing in a state or Canadian province where no ice racing trackchasing visit has ever occurred. And then there’s that!
Randy Lewis
World’s #1 Trackchaser