Trucks at ORP

Another track checked off the list...the truck race last night at O'Reilly Race Park was really good for a number of things. Ron Hornaday won, fending off an eager Kyle Busch and took Timothy Peters to school on "the slide job." Just plain great.

A bit about the facility:

They charge for parking--I don't really get this. They're obviously jacking the prices for the NASCAR week anyway...$47 for just the trucks and $52 for the Nationwide. This is for a spot on a backless bench, which is much too narrow to share with the rest of humanity. So the extra $10-$15 for a parking spot seems just gratuitous.

With all the extra income from Speedfest...I would ask ORP to fix their score board. They use "7" for the digit "1" and "9" for the digit "4"...which is all very confusing when you're checking what lap you're on. Things just don't seem to be counting up or down. I won't hold the four position board, that's what most regional tracks manage to maintain.

Restrooms...well maintained and plenty. Thank you!

No tunnel...but as I said before. As a local track, that's fine.

The dragstrip is a thing of beauty! Makes me wanna try out some NHRA action. You can see this is where ORP gets the $$$, as they've even got some suites for the strip.

Getting there from Indy...so simple. Especially where we ignored the DOT signs and just followed Crawfordsville Road. Literally only 15 minutes. Leaving was just as sweet, once somebody wth more sense than us opened the gates for the strip, allowing us to leave the way we arrived. Otherwise it was everybody going nowhere as nobody knew which way to go--humans are creatures of habit. Don't give us a rat maze all of a sudden. We knew how this worked when the sun was up.

The racing: Awesome. Two real racing grooves with just enough room to squeeze a third when you had to. Tires gave up after 60 laps, putting a lot of wheel back in the driver's hands. And seats are down close to the action and can still see all the turns. That's the hallmarks of a great little facility.

And a note about the Trucks: Look, when the Top 10 trucks are running a totally separate race from the rest of the field, you don't really have parity. You have 26 trucks in the way of the frontrunners. NASCAR even lowered the threshold for minimum speed, the difference between first and last speed was so disparate. In this case, there is no possibility for the wanna-be's to win. All they can hope for is to stay out of the way of Hornaday & Busch's front bumper.

To me, this is a clear indication that the Truck Series is in far more trouble than the lack of sponsors tells us. Not this year...probably not next. But unless things turn around in the higher series, the Camping World Truck Series will not be long for this world.

Later! (More heat today...ughness)