HRPT Day 7 - zMax Raceway

Today's venue was zMax Raceway which was only about 1.5 hours from Monroe.  We started the day off early regardless.  If we were going to guess the route wrong, today was the day as there were many thigns to do in the area.  We went to Hendrick Motorsports Museum and also the Mustang Museum.  We had a few BBQ sandwiches and then started off for the venue.

Getting into the venue today was worse than the day before.  The temperature was incredibly hot and we were backed up all through the three lanes into the speedway and out onto the roads.  We had been counting cars we saw broke down on the side of the road and today we doubled that count to 24.  Most of those which were broken down seemed to be overheating.

We waited in line for what seemed to be forever and suddenly, they started letting people cut in front of us from the road we were initially lined up on.  I learned later that the city forces them to do something if cars on the road start to back up through stop lights.  Aaron and I were not too happy about them cutting in but later learned we were on a Vice Grip Garage video as Derek was one of those that cut in right behind us.  

It took a total of 1.5 hours just to make it off the road and to a parking spot.

We quickly got our tour credentials punched again.  Each day we stopped by the Painless Wiring booth as we were told that at some point they would start to give away extra long haul stickers for the windshields and I wanted an extra.  Today was our lucky day and they gave both Aaron and I one since we both had long haul credentials.  

While we were there, a black Dodge Dakota was about to make a run down the race track and blew up on the line.  I learned later that he blew the transmission on the starting line.  The truck then caught on fire from all the flammable transmission fluid.

We drove a short distance away to our hotel and were at 1,570 miles when we stopped.  We ate at a Juicy Crab just down the road from the hotel.  There were a few cars in this hotel parking lot so we walked around that evening looking at them some.  We then called it an evening.