Crown Royal invited Assistant Editor Rocky Rakovic to experience auto racing with the Royal treatment. He was given a pit pass, a ride in the pace car and shadowed the race’s Grand Marshal. Oh yeah, Rocky had never watched a race, doesn’t much like cars and is content on taking the subway to work. Here’s his first dispatch:
I received a call from the Crown Royal people inviting me to the Dan Lowry 400 at Richmond International Raceway. “Who is Dan Lowry?” I asked. Turns out he’s a regular guy. In the sport (I’ll call it a sport until I confirm or deny it’s “sportiness”) where advertising is king, Crown Royal bucked the trend by giving their naming rights away to a Regular Joe, or in this case: Dan. Dan Lowry won a contest in which he had to write a 50-word essay about his favorite experience with Crown Royal. To give you a feeling of how long that essay was the introductory paragraph to this post is longer. I was promised full access to the race and their cabinet of Crown—I’m in.
-I’m not a “car guy,” I don’t salivate over the new Audi or—hold on let me ask a coworker—Bugatti. I don’t feel the need for speed. I barrage the Crown Royal people with idiotic questions: ear plugs? How fast does the pace car go? Not to sound weird, but what do I wear? The answers: Yes. Fast. And khakis. I’m totally out of my element; I haven’t worn khakis since third grade.
- I didn’t trust myself to fall asleep and wake up in the morning so I stayed up drinking. I grab Kingsley Amis’s Everyday Drinking and get to the airport at 4:30 for my 5 AM flight (the race is at night but I’m told it is an all-day event). I arrive in Richmond and expect to see legions of people in cut-off jeans and NASCAR hats. Nope. Goth kids everywhere, must be a convention.
-8:13 AM my phone buzzes. It is my friend’s sister and she is already partying.
-Grab a cab and head out for the hotel. The cab driver tells me that it is a slow day for him because all the NASCAR fans descended upon Richmond days ago and have been partying ever since. I ask him if he likes auto racing and he replies, “Sure, but real racing. I’m from Africa and there we have safari racing. This is off-road racing not just the spin, spin, spin that you guys have here.” He goes on to say that the off-road means something to his people because it proves that the cars that win and/or finish the race are reliable cars that will handle their natural terrain. He said that he bought a Toyota once because it won the big race that year.
-Richmond is a quiet, quiet town. It reminds me of Hartford—a city where people work but turns into a ghost city on the weekend.
-I’m dropped off at the hotel and immediately see hot girls in #88 bikini tops. They tell me that it’s for Dale Earnhart Jr. He’s making the push to be my favorite racer (more on this later) right now.
-In the elevator going up to my room I ride with four males. Three have mustaches and the other is five years old.
-I wait in the lobby for my escorts who are returning from filming a Fox & Friends segment with Dan Lowry. The TV is reporting on the Playboy/Crown Royal Kentucky Derby party from last night but somehow with the amount of racing fans (they all seem to be wearing shirts of their drivers’ respective main sponsor) yipping it up in the lobby I assume that I might be at the bigger race this weekend.
-Two Crown Royal guys drive me toward the track. About three miles away we run into what looks like a refugee camp of RVs and trailers. Flags with car numbers are flown in each camp. The guys decipher the numbers by telling me which driver is being supported by which trailers. They tell me that #11 is Denny Hamlin who is a local boy and while not one of the premier drivers he’ll have a strong following today due to geography. The next #11 RV that we pass has a cardboard sign and it reads, “Girls Gone Wild Auditions Hear,” scrawled in marker. Girls are actually walking up to it. You don’t see this at the ballpark.
-The block parties of trailers don’t stop, and leading up to the track I see more guys in high socks than I did throughout the late ‘80s. Everybody is drinking beer (for a time check it is 10-ish), and even though I’m in tobacco country, I don’t see much smoking. Not judging books by their covers but I marvel at how the NASCAR clientele that doesn’t seem to be too affluent at this point makes their sport one of the highest grossing. The Crown Royal guys explain that it is in the numbers and the fact that if, say, a fan’s favorite driver is supported by a beer brand then he will only drink that beer. I ask if there is a Pabst Blue Ribbon car.
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