November 6, 2009

The week after a race is typically one of the more depressing weeks of the year. We spend six months preparing for an event and we ride that adrenaline right up until Monday morning after the race, and then it’s all gone. People always ask me, ‘man, it must be nice to see all those campers leave on Monday morning?’ My response is the same every time, ‘if that was the case, I would change jobs.’

But we have had some things going on around here this week, with the Nationwide test for the new car on Monday and the construction crews moving in equipment for the grandstand renovation. The new car test seemed to go very well and NASCAR seemed to be pleased with what they saw. The new car will not debut at TSS until 2011, but will be at Daytona in July of 2010.

Wednesday I sat in on a construction meeting concerning the grandstand renovations and realized just how choreographed this project has to be. They have started taking out the seats and demolishing the concrete pillars where the seats were. As you can imagine, these contractors are on a pretty tight timeline and understand the urgency – they have to be finished with Phase 1 before the Aaron’s Dream Weekend. There are no other options.

This reminds me of 2006 when we paved the track for the first time 25+ years. There were a lot anxious people during that project, because without a race track we couldn’t have a race. That was the first thing the contractor was told when they got the job to re-pave the track and they were reminded daily. In the end, the drivers gave the paving crew a standing ovation at the driver’s meeting, and maybe at the end of the grandstand project, another standing ovation will be given.