This was a rare opportunity to pair racing and a trip to Disneyland and that was super fun. NASCAR had a very stacked lineup at Fan Fest starting at 10:30 am. So we knew we wanted to be there in sufficient time to be able to watch all of those. We planned to leave between 8:30 and 9 because we were staying near Disneyland as opposed to downtown LA. Unfortunately, the rental car had a nail in the tire, so we had to call an audible and take an Uber.
We got to fan fest right at 10, it wasn’t a particularly large layout so we got grilled cheese sandwiches and front row seats at the main stage. Very laid-back vibe. The drivers were all in a very good mood.
The first pairing of the day Bubba [Wallace] shot a photo back at us in the audience. Bubba shared that he is planning to do a lot more day-in-the-life photography this year and put it on his stories. Bubba noticed that I was wearing a Bubba Wallace Speed Shop shirt and complimented me on it, which was very sweet.
I was really impressed with Brad [Keselowski], as a team owner, hyping his guy Chris [Buescher].
Kyle Busch seemed a lot more relaxed then he has in sometime. Austin Dillon was good at getting to him to tell some funny stories.
Shirtless, no context Noah [Gragson]. Noah and Erik Jones are really funny together.
Mr. H [Rick Hendrick] is very generous with his toys
Daniel Suarez told the story of his proposal which was cute and funny.
Standouts for fan experience would be Noah coming early and staying late to make sure that anyone who wanted an autograph or picture got one. So did AJ [Allmendinger] and Justin Haley, they were the last two.
Oh, Denny Hamlin gets one of everything Jordan that Nike puts out. So he has a ridiculous shoe collection. Tyler [Reddick] said he just got his first shipment. He is a shoe guy, he was very very excited. Bubba pointed out that his Jordans won’t keep his feet warm and dry in the rain as opposed Columbia.
The heat races were super fun.
I know people keep commenting about the crowd size, but they really did put on the tickets that the event started at 5. So the people who were there early were established NASCAR fans who knew what the deal was. It was still a pretty decent size crowd. It’s just impossible in that huge of a stadium to convey what 20 or 30,000 people look like. I would say by the end of the night it was definitely 60-75% full which since it holds 100,000 people it is pretty difficult to get a read on.
I missed a lot of Cypress Hill. I would say that the acoustics of the music was much better than last year. I really enjoyed Wiz Khalifa. They have great DJs playing music throughout the day which helped contribute to the very good vibe.
The cars were still loud with the mufflers, but it did make sense to muffle them in that stadium. The race itself was a lot of fun minus that stretch of cautions around 75 to 65 to go.
Truex had been good the entire day so it was not surprising that he made his way up front and won. I would say the other visibly strong cars were Bubba and Alex [Bowman], particularly Alex in the second half. Still not sure how [Ryan] Blaney ended up a lap down, but it was impressive that he got that lap back eventually, and made it all the way into the top 10 before getting dumped again.
Because of the whole rental car fiasco, we walked down the street to the USC Hotel to put in for an Uber, which took a while because the streets in Downtown LA were very messed up because of both the race and the GRAMMYs.
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