Life and Stuff: More Bristol

Thursday's set up went well enough. We had a bunch of dumb little technical problems that eventually worked themselves out. It was one of those days where a lot of very small things kept going wrong and taking your time.

The Bristol Raceway is really coming to life. With the small infield - it doesn't take much to fill it up. Bristol's racetrack is the size of a very large football stadium and seats 165,000 people. Unlike the other tracks that I've been to - there's no infield parking/camping for the spectators. If you're watching the race, you're either in a beacher seat or at home.

While working in the infield/pits on thursday, I was talking to one of the crew from Jeff Gordon's team about the "car of tomorrow' that they're using here. For non-Nascar fans, there's a new style car that being used here at Bristol called the "car of tomorrow" (COT). It has some enhancements that improve safety and make the the race a more level playing field. Anyway, what I didn't know (and most Nascar fans probably know this) is that every car out ther has the same body shape. There's not really an Impala SS shaped car or a Camry shaped car - they're all the same shape except for some contour lines in the hood. If they were all painted grey, you couldn't tell them apart. There seems to be some 'unhappiness' with some about this fact.

So, with this COT in place, they are able to measure each car more accurately to assure it conforms to the prescribed shape. They have a couple of stations set up here that each car must go through and be measured. I think the basic template measurement has been around for quite a while, but they have a new 3 dimensional template that they lower onto the car to make sure it's the right shape. It was interesting to watch them do this - but I couldn't believe how long it took. It took them basically all day to measure the cars.