LESSON LEARNED

No big newsflash here, but NASCAR events are extremely weather dependent.  Practice, qualifying, and races.  None can happen on schedule when Mother Nature decided to flex her muscles.  This weekend's events at Chicagoland Speedway are a prime example.

This happened to us this spring at Martinsville.  Hubby was SO excited about being able to go to an early-season race, God bless him....  He ordered our truck race tickets for Saturday and cup race tickets for Sunday months in advance.  We were going to Virginia in late March - weather there should be nice and springlike at that time of year, right?  Wrong! 

It rained all night Friday night, but ever the optimists we knew it would be okay for the truck race on Saturday.  Wrong again. We woke up Saturday morning and it was still raining.  Bucketfuls.  We tuned in the Sirius Nascar station to see what the report from the track was.  "Chance of clearing" they said so we decided to head out from the campground in the hopes that "chance" meant "100% chance."  Well, as it turned out 'chance' meant more like 'little to no chance'.  When we arrived at the track we got a great parking space!  No one else was crazy enough to think this was anything but a monsoon!  We pulled on our raincoats, popped up our umbrellas, and headed to the Fan Zone.  It was actually a great time to be there.  We had to dodge each others' umbrellas, but everyone was having fun, just like little kids playing in the rain!

We bought the things we went there to buy and as it started to rain even harder, decided to go back to our truck and wait for awhile.  Luckily I thought to throw a couple of snacks and some drinks in the truck before we left so we had a little picnic inside the truck and watch the antics of those who were trying to tailgate in the rain.  It was quite entertaining!  Meanwhile, they kept pushing back the time of the race - an hour, a half hour, and so on and so on.  Soon the discussion turned to "if" it stops raining and how much daylight would be left to get the race in. 

The rain never really stopped, although it got a lot lighter.  So we decided to head over to the track to see what was happening.  This was the first time NASCAR was using the new Air Titans and we thought it would be interesting to see them in action.  Hubby got to talk to one of the guys who drives an Air Titan so that was pretty fascinating (for him - haha!)

We found our seats, put our trashbag down first so that we weren't sitting in puddles, and settled in.  No more than 5 minutes later the announcement came - truck race has been postponed until AFTER tomorrow's cup race.  And here is the Lesson Learned part:  Anyone with a ticket for the truck race could get into the cup race an hour after it started, and anyone with a cup race ticket could stay for the truck race!  We had spent $70 (give or take) that we really did not need to spend.  OUCH!

The same thing just happened to ticket holders in Chicago.

So my advice is this:  If you are planning to spend the weekend at the races, buy your tickets for Sunday only.  If the weather is nice and everything goes off on schedule, buy your tickets for Friday or Saturday at the gate - there are always tons of tickets available and usually these races are general admission so you're not buying a 'seat' anyway - just admission.  If the weather is lousy and races get rescheduled, you will get two for the price of one - kind of like a BOGO in the grocery store!