Someone got KILLED at the race today…
Partially because NASCAR decided to forego any announcement, let alone call the race… a PA announcement, while important, isn’t enough… Whe you go to a race, you have the ability to listen to the team communications on a scanner… The headphones are pretty solid, as you can imagine they would need to be, so PA announcements wouldnt really get the job done as those with radios on wouldn’t hear it. Plus, as long as there are cars on the track, there will be fans in the atands… Its just that simple…
We were fortunate enough to be in the garage today and about 20 mins before the storm rolled in, teams started packing up because they all knew how bad it was going to be… My brother in law (who works on a team) came over and told me that it was 15 mins away and was going to be really bad (which I knew from twitter and hearing teams talk on scanners - though had there not be an earlier rain delay, I would have had no juice left in my phone and my scanner batteries were beeping the “low juice” warning, so dumb luck on both parts…) and I texted my mom - who had gone down to another pit stall at that point…
NASCAR or track officials (or both? Can’t remember) also came over to tell us it would be bad and to take precautions… So we moved as close to the pit exit as possible and the minute it started raining, headed over & out… Luckily, we were parked very close to the stands, so we got to our car before it got too awful… Earlier in the day, I found myself ankle deep in water in the garage in a thunderstorm and all I could think was how I was totally screwed if anything got hit and I knew I didn’t want to be in that position again, even though it meant telling my mom that seeing jeff gordon (her fav) in victory lane wasn’t happening… She hadn’t been reading the Internet all day, so she just had to trust me & my BIL when we told her that it was no joke…
The fatal One of the two lightning strikes happened about 100ft from our car and I happened to look up in time to see it… By that point the lightning was everywhere, the rain was monsooning, the car was rocking a bit and flag poles were bent at 45degree angles… Bad enough that I texted thedept an “if I die…” message… I don’t know that I was worried about lightning as much as I was about debris, falling electrical wires, etc, but it was all bad…
NASCAR needs to take responsibility for the fans & everyone else at the track - media workers, consession workers, crews, drivers, etc… They need to put warnings on the jumbotrons, break in across all radio communications, and red flag the race- even if there is no actual rain- to protect the fans, crews, etc.
it’s just not right…
