NASCAR driving at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

The Las Vegas motor speedway is huge, I've never been around NASCAR, but knew it was big... just how big is surprising.  This place has enough hot black pavement and stands to last me a while.

600 hp V8's tearing around is ear splittingly awesome.  I for years have drawn the line at never having owned a V8; 6 cylinder engines do the job and that's a mild bit of under consumption to leave it at that.  That's so-un American of me.  I'm not sure if I can hold that rule anymore, letting a V8 scream at high RPM and wide open throttle at maximum speed is pretty unreal when coming out of the corners and down the straight.  The muscles in the left side of my neck will be sore from working against g-force.  You can't even hear yourself think.  You can never supersize your fries enough in America, nor have too much horsepower, or a stadium too big to enjoy both of the above.

Karen, who on this trip is "the chick" (as there's only one) learned how to drive standard today.  I've never met anyone who learned to drive stick in a car with that much power.  She also had the highest to speed of the day.  That'll come in handy if she ever teaches kids to drive stick "yeah just shift up to 4th at about a hundred miles an hour and keep it pinned". 

NASCARs and track driving was awesome.  Very different obviously than Baja.  It's a science of small variables, whereas in Baja the act of being smooth is very different, more dealing with randomness than minutiae of setup on each lap.  Being out there with 20+ other cars would be total mayhem.   It's basically crits vs. BC Bike Race.

Richard Petty made himself a legend and dominated a sport that seems very hard to dominate.  He must have had a very canny mind for strategy and details developing as the race unfolded. 

There's many more car types and places on my to-do driving list, and the NASCAR experience was pretty enlightening.  "Shake 'n bake" has a whole new level of appreciation for me.