Last Group of NASCAR photos for awhile I promise!

These are a few of the photos we took on Saturday (the day of the race). After this I promise to post some pictures of the events from the All-Star festivities in St. Louis :)

Joey Lagano drives the Home Depot #20 car and he's only 18! His nickname is "Sliced Bread" because he's pretty darn good. That cracks me up. He seems like a pretty cool guy though - great with fans!

I thought this photo of Dale Jr. was really cool. They ride around the track in the back of a truck during driver introductions and the truck had a flag on it. Worked out great for us!


This one is just cool because we were able to get so close!

Jr. was very proud of the Gatti thing he put on his helmet and we weren't quite sure why at the time. Turns out he was friends with the boxer Arturo Gatti, who was killed that day in Brazil. Jr's P.R. guy kept asking the media to take photos of it so we made sure to get some too because it sounded important. Kindof a neat tribute to his friend.

The flyover during the National Anthem was a Stealth! Way cool.

After the crew changes tires during a pit stop, one of the crew guys heats up the tire with a blow torch and then scrapes off a layer of rubber to inspect the tire-wear so they know how they are holding up. Then they can decide if they should be pitting sooner or not. I just thought the picture was neat!

Such a cool sunset!

Sam Hornish Jr. had a bit of an accident...

And so did Jeff Burton, who drives the Caterpillar car. We had decided that we wanted a small piece of sheetmetal from a wrecked car for a souvenir to hang in the garage. Well the nice, small pieces that were cut off of his car got scooped up from another fan (who happens to live in Peoria) so we missed out. However, they cut off the whole front end of the car after that! We debated about whether we wanted that big of a souvenir or not, but decided we might not get the chance again. So.... now we have the wrecked front end of the CAT car hanging in our garage. The two of us had to carry it a pretty long way from the garage in the middle of the track all the way to the car in the parking lot. I'm guessing it weighs around 60 lbs. and it was all oily and greasy. But we did it! My shoulder hurt for the next few days but now we have a hilarious memory/story from the race and an odd souvenir hanging out in the garage.

We are such weirdos.