More Than Just Fan Friendly
This week I was blessed with the opportunity to travel along with the NASCAR “city” to Las Vegas Motor Speedway. I toured the track a few years ago, but I have never been to this track for a race weekend. I arrived Friday afternoon and was overwhelmed by the number of people present. Never, in my NASCAR weekend experience, have I seen so many people in attendance on a Friday.
To give you a better idea of this abnormality, I thought I would briefly explain the events of any given NASCAR weekend. Typically the NASCAR teams arrive early Friday morning to unload and set up and then, spend the early afternoon and evening in multiple practice and qualifying sessions. Fridays are open to the general public for a low ticket price. I have been to at least ten Friday events and I have watched even more on TV. The typical crowd present for this day usually fills 20% of the grandstands. Saturday morning is spent in more practice and qualifying sessions leading up to the Nationwide, the lower division, race. The crowd on hand at the start of the race typically fills 75% of the grand stands. And then comes Sunday, the big race! Sundays almost always have a sold out crowd.
With this in mind, you can see why I was surprised to see the crazy number of people present this last Friday. The same proved to be true on Saturday. What is different about Las Vegas Motor Speedway? Is it the facilities? The fans? 
As I thought about this throughout the weekend, I came to some conclusions. Las Vegas Motor Speedway is overall very fan friendly. I have been to 8 NASCAR race tracks throughout the country and Las Vegas was definitely the cleanest and most up to date. On top of this, Las Vegas Motor Speedway has a unique infield set up, very much like a theme park. They call it the Neon Garage. The driver’s garages are set up in a circle and each garage can be viewed through windows up top or down below. Fans are charged to enter the garage area, but are able to watch the drivers and teams at work in their element. To have this experience at all other tracks, fans must have a hot pass, essentially a press pass and they are incredibly difficult to get unless you are a journalist or know someone who knows someone. I wonder if the Neon Garage will catch on at the other racetracks.
