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 and doesn’t much like cars. This was his first entry, this was his second, and here is his third:
-The pace car ride was a trip. We took a few laps around the banked walls of the track and if we were to do one more I’d get vertigo—I can only imagine how tough it is for racers to go around a few hundred times.
-We leave the comforts of the VIP parking lot and head out into the great unwashed in the general tailgating areas. I text my friend's sister, but before attempting to connect with her we visit Dan’s buddies.
-They are the good kind of rowdy: excited to be at the race, excited that their friend is the Grand Marshal, and excited to be drinking beer. Many of them had to take off work to make the road trip but they managed to squeeze nine guys (except for one or two all of them are linemen) and $132 worth of beer into two vehicles. They tell me that the bellhop was none-too-pleased about having to wheel a luggage cart full of 30 packs to their room. We work on how to steal the “Dan Lowry” banners (see above) for their boy.
-“Show us yer tits!” a group member yells to a passing girl. She does, and with quite the pair. I make it my mission to get Dan’s John Hancock on a pair of breasts before post time.
-We have to get back to the infield so that Dan can do more press interviews. On the way over I ask him if he had any media training. “What’s media training?” he asks me.
-While Dan goes into a radio booth, I shoot the air with other media guys in the press trailer. They tell me the most-important part of being a Grand Marshal is shouting, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” I don’t bother to ask what Danica Patrick thinks of this.
-They tell me the most memorable recent GMs who excelled at the call were Matthew McConaughy and Stevie Wonder. I don’t think that those two have anything else in common.
-The reporters also tell me that the crowd will be fired up as it is a night race. “If you are a fan and go to a normal race you start tailgating at eight and then the race is in the afternoon,” one tells me. “If you are a fan and you go to a night race you start drinking at eight and continue for 12 hours until the race starts. There will be a shitload of drunk people out tonight.”
-On the way back into the drunk people I ask Dan what kind of flair he is going to add to the “Gentlemen…” call. He says that he’s most nervous about that duty and figures he’ll wing it rather than over-think it. We pass by more flashing women and forget what we were talking about.
-I take a plug of Crown Royal XR, it is creamy, smoky and $190 a bottle, while I try to track down my friend’s sister. When the day began, she was texting me with acronyms- now I suspect she’s certainly buzzed because she’s using emoticons that you wouldn’t use with somebody you’ve never met. I try to get a beat on where she is while trying to figure out where exactly I am. It appears that I’m lost in a cornfield of corporate advertising as everyone is dressed like his or her favorite car. The friend’s sister tells me to find the tent with all the Dixie flags on it and then keep walking away from the stadium until I see a pick-up truck with a couch in its bed. There are Stars and Bars everywhere and most trucks either have pools or couches on their beds.
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