IndyCar and TransAm Shriek Through the Downtown Streets of Nashville at 135 decibels.
A salute to “Music City”:
My Fellow Racing Friends! “Red Eye” airplane flights, a week for the transporter to get the cars back home, a complete teardown and rebuild, restock and reload of all of the equipment so as to get us prepared for Nashville – followed closely on the heels of the two West Coast (Sonoma & Monterey) events. There is so much that has happened that I want to tell you about that it may take us into winter for me to actually get you caught up but I’m going to save it and jump ahead to “The Music City Grand Prix” in Nashville. After Nashville, we have a full month before Watkins Glen. Thus, during this downtime, I hope to get back to telling you my side of Sonoma and Monterey.
Nashville: It takes a lot for me to dole out accolades but I’m giving a bundle to the Promoters of the Nashville Grand Prix.
Edward, Alan, Jake, Luke, Jim, and I had the extreme honor of being a small part in what I would consider being one of the finest, most well-run attempts at perfection that I have recently seen. That being the “Big Machine, Music City Grand Prix” put on in part by fellow racer and friend – Scott Borchetta. To get a better feel for the dynamics of Scott Borchetta, I strongly encourage any of our readers and fans to “Google” Scott.
I’m talking about the controlled shut down of the entire inner city of a major US population center to hold an automobile race through the downtown streets, across a 1600-foot-long bridge, and around the massive parking lot of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans football stadium. A relatively small course of a little over 2 miles in length requiring a massive 6 miles of concrete barriers, over 10 miles of double-thick chain-link catch fences, 400 safety and crowd control stations, 54 temporary bleachers, thousands of Porta Poti’s, and (I’m told) 463 vendors to handle drinks and food for the over 125,000 spectators, 250 race car crews and 4,000 security and safety workers. And let’s not forget all of their equipment necessary to erect the course, control the crowd and nationally televise the event. And it wasn’t just handled. It was handled to perfection. From my eyes, the event team pulled it off without a single visible hitch or glitch in the event. Ladies and Gentlemen, I salute you.
