Oilpressure

By Susan Phillips

Ever since we have been attending races as media members, I’ve realized that there is something special about attending a track for the first time. As most of you know, George despises change—but I find something almost invigorating about going to different tracks and getting a change of scenery.

There are few areas at Indy that we haven’t been to. It’s hard to compare that huge and historic place to any other venue we go to; so I’ll leave it out of this discussion. The first non-Indy track we covered for Oilpressure was Barber, in the first year it hosted an IndyCar race. As they found their way, it was almost charming. What they lacked in efficiency those first couple of years, they made up for in southern charm.

We quickly fell in love with Barber. It was close to home, it was a beautiful facility, and was a nice segue into May. Everyone always seemed to be in a good mood and it was a very fun weekend. We met so many people during those now “old fashioned” Tweet-ups. It was great—even though we got flooded out of the old Media Center on more than one occasion.

For years, those were our two races—Barber and Indy. We were in our comfort zone at those two tracks—but we did go to Fontana in 2013. Then in 2015, we branched out and went to the NOLA race at New Orleans. That was an experience. The media center was actually very nice, but everything was so spread out. It rained the whole weekend, but the parking situation would’ve made it tough for fans on the driest weekend.

When George got his IndyCar hard card in 2016, one of the requirements was to attend and cover at least half of the races on the schedule. That’s when we really bumped up our in-person races and got to experience a lot of new tracks.

Both of us have made it clear over the years how much we like Road America. It has a very small media center and it is very unique. But the staff there is super-friendly and our first year—they gave us some good restaurant tips that we still follow to this day.

But other media centers are more modern and roomier. To our surprise, Fontana was not one of them. It was small, cramped and set up in an odd way. Pocono was interesting. Their facilities seemed antiquated, but they worked. George liked Pocono better than I did. The year I went they managed to cram everyone who is normally in the victory lane into the Media Center due to a sudden downpour at the end of the race.

One track that was a pleasant surprise was Sonoma. We went there expecting not to like it, because George didn’t like watching it on TV. But the track and the area were gorgeous, even though George always called the race a dust bowl.

St. Petersburg has an interesting layout for the media. It’s on the second floor of a theater. But temporary circuits have temporary facilities. The most “interesting” media center was for our home race in Nashville. It was in the underground bowels of the Titans stadium, and had no windows. It was so quiet in there it was oppressive.

You probably don’t care much about media centers as much as what’s there for the fans. For fans, it’s hard to beat Road America. But based on what we’ve seen here, Iowa is a close second. We plan to go to Milwaukee over Labor Day, and we will finish the season at Nashville Superspeedway. Remembering races there that we attended as fans—it was great at first, but things quickly dropped off year after year.

Today, with qualifying, the concerts and the first of two races, we will get a better idea of Iowa Speedway, but from what we see—we like. Hy-Vee has spent a ton of money here and it shows. We hope with them sponsoring Milwaukee that they can do the same thing there. But we love Iowa so far—I think it will only get better from now!

This entry was posted on July 13, 2024 at 8:57 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.