sunday race day

Sunday (6/23) was race day for the indycar round at laguna seca. This day marked the halfway point in the indycar season, as well as the indy nxt season. We arrived around 8 am and went and put our chairs down and walked to the paddock area. We walked around the paddock area for a little while and we realized that the porsche cups were waiting to go onto the track. We then caught the drivers getting in the cars and firing them up. We were not wearing our ear pro so it was quite loud, but it was incredible to see these machines running so close up. After we walked out to our spots to watch the 35 minute race for the porsche cups. On the way up the hill we watched the start of the race and took some good video of the cars approaching the final turn. After the porsche cups finished it was time for Radical cup NA to go for their final race. We watched from our spot at the corkscrew and I cannot stress this enough, the radicals are some of the coolest race cars to watch. They had a 45 minute race in which they were required to make a pitstop and as usual it was incredible to watch them race. It was then time for the indycar warmup session around noon. We once again watched from our spot at the corkscrew and thankfully it was nice and clear unlike last year where the session was cancelled due to a little bit of fog. After there was a 35 minute break between indycar warmup and indy nxt race 2 where I walked up to the food trucks at the top of the hill and got a smoothie and a chicken quesadilla, both of which were pretty good. We then watched the indynxt race which was unfortunately pretty processional due to the difficult passing nature of the circuit, however overall it was still great to watch. After there was an hour and a half break before the indycar race started. I spent basically all of this time on my phone. One thing that was part of the pre-race proceedings that I thought was weird was the circuit wide pre race prayer. I do not think that any sort of enforced religion belongs at the race track, and I think that that was completely unnecessary. Then the national anthem occurred and the drivers started their two formation laps for the indycar race. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a caution for almost 35 laps. The first caution came out when the number 51 car hit the wall at turn 4, the driver was ok but his race was over. Following that the race threw out a bunch of cautions, about 6, which helped create an incredible race. After the race ended, the winner was alex palou in the number 10 cgr car and we began walking towards our car. Last year it took us an hour and a half to leave the circuit area, however this year we were on highway 68 within 15 minutes. This made it so our drive home was much quicker, and we stopped at an in n out in san jose for dinner. We eventually got home around 10:30 pm, finishing a great trip

My current Challenge progress as of December 23, 2024.