My First NASCAR Race

[Highbank]

February 1st, 1969

As an AJ Foyt fan I was very disappointed seeing Foyt's #1 starting to fail and Petty passing for the win...

Note "The Petty Line" thru the Esses, as we called it back in those days, Earnhardt drove the same line many times too...

 

[M_Nesevitch]

April 1979. Martinsville VA. Petty made it back to VL, on a short track, in like 4 years. Looked like rain all the way there from Manassas, but it let up and they got the race in! My boy Cale finished 11th, 8 laps down. Can't remember what happened to him.. (I was 11 years old)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxJ5tRWF7Hw

 

[The_Tigg]

My first and only NASCAR race, JPM was running away with it until a questionable pit road speeding penalty.

View: https://youtu.be/VxX1GC0hM9s


Edit, I should have said Cup race, I've seen the trucks at Iowa too

 

[mtblillie]

Also my first and only race, in 2002 I lived in the San Francisco bay area and my family got tickets for me and a buddy to go see the cup race at Sonoma. Funny thing about that race, we got all weekend passes to watch practice and qualifying, and on Thursday and Friday the track was still called Sears Point Raceway, but Saturday morning when we went to watch the ARCA West race (back then it was the NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Tour, later combined with the Winston West to become the K&N Pro West series before moving to ARCA) there was new branding all over the track to name it Infineon Raceway. Harvick was leading the race by a mile on Saturday but his car gave out and series favorite Jim Inglebright won instead with local Jelly Belly sponsorship. The cup race on Sunday was won by Ricky Rudd, which would be his last win in the cup series and only win in 2002.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3RugrhKvg8

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbksdoqcroY

 

[phantom17]

My first cup race. Won tickets from my supply house through Exact windows and Doors which sponsored Casey Attwood in the Busch Series. I took my Dad with me, we had a meet and great with hospitality with Casey Attwood ( at the time everyone was saying he would be the next Jeff Gordon.) Saw the Busch race then the next day the Cup race. It was a great time and the day I became a Kenseth fan! I had followed him in the Busch series before that and his Battles with Jr. for the championship but this sealed the deal for me.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nArQW-BgQhI

 

[Rollo75]

Goodyear 500 - Calder Thunderdome

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgDa6veyEJs


I was 9 years old.
I'd already seen touring car racing and an F1 grand prix by this stage.

NASCAR could never work in Australia as all of the cars were imported. Some races were held at Adelaide International Raceway but the other problem is that you can't really hold an entire season on mostly one track.

 

[DaleTona]

Despite being a NASCAR fan since birth, the first time the stars aligned so that I could go to a race was the fall Phoenix race in 2010.

I don't remember much, as I was maybe no older than 10-11 at the time. I sadly couldn't see the finish as my younger brother who was getting board and antsy nagged my parents to leave midway through so I missed Edward's backflip.

 

[The_Tigg]

Oh, I still have this

 

[ShadowKnight508]

My first-ever NASCAR race that I had the pleasure of attending was the 2007 Subway Fresh Fit 500(k) at Phoenix International Raceway. The previous year (October 2006), as part of my 16th birthday present, my parents purchased a ticket on the frontstretch for the then Nextel Cup Series race at Phoenix in April of 2007. My dad also bought a ticket for the race along with the two plane tickets, and we both flew down to Phoenix, Arizona via Southwest Airlines. My dad's best friend Mitchell (from back in his high school days) lives outside of Phoenix, so he picked us up from Sky Harbor International Airport and let us stay at his place for the entire race weekend.

Mitchell also provided our ride to the race track on Sunday morning, dropping us off roughly two-ish hours ahead of the race starting. I had put together some money on the side to purchase a pit road pass, so I was able to wander around pit lane and the frontstretch with the other fans as the teams were pushing their cars onto pit road from the garage area. This race was one of the races being run during the 2007 season that featured the new Car of Tomorrow (COT), so it was somewhat odd seeing the new COT up close and personal after being used to the traditional Gen-4 cars that I had been watching since the 2001 Daytona 500.

Took a bunch of photos of the cars on pit road, teams setting up their pit boxes, and got to sign the start/finish line with the mini-Sharpie that AAA Insurance had been giving out at the ticket gate. Then I met back up with my father and we went to find our seats for the race. Watched the driver's introductions, stood for the national anthem, and then settled in for 312 miles of racing with the COT with the sun sitting low on the distant horizon as the lights around the track began to turn on shortly after the race started. The race was the first one to be held in the aftermath of the tragic mass shooting at Virginia Tech, so all of the cars had a special "VT" sticker on them (Ward Burton had the VT logo on the hood of his #4 State Water Heaters Chevy Impala SS):

I ended up watching Jeff Gordon (then my favorite driver) take home the win after a late-race duel with Tony Stewart in the closing stages of the race. This win (76th career win) tied Jeff with the legendary Dale Earnhardt Sr, so when Jeff came around after taking the checkered flag, his team gave him a black flag with the #3 on it so when he made a victory lap around the track, the #3 would once again take another lap around Phoenix International Raceway. Most of the fans around me were not happy that Jeff won, so plenty of them were swearing, booing, and flipping off Jeff as he drove past celebrating the win (one of the photos I took showed a fan giving Jeff the bird as he drove past). My dad and I stayed until Jeff had climbed out of the car in Victory Lane and was in the middle of his interview with FOX before we began the long walk to the parking lot where Mitchell was waiting to pick us up from the race. We spent the night at Mitchell's place, and then he dropped us off the next morning at Sky Harbor so we could catch our flight back to Sacramento International Airport via Southwest Airlines.

In the years since, I have attended two more NASCAR race weekends (see below), and I will be also attending the upcoming race weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway (Gateway) in June when both the Truck Series and Cup Series battle it out (NOTE: this is the inaugural Cup Series race at WWT Raceway).

2016
[NXS] 2016 TreatMyClot.com 300 at Auto Club Speedway (Austin Dillon won in his #2 Rheem Chevy Camaro SS after Kyle Busch had a tire go flat in the closing laps and Daniel Suarez ran out of fuel on the last lap after passing Busch, which allowed Austin to take home the win by passing Kyle's slow #18 NOS Energy Toyota Camry coming off of Turn 4 heading towards the checkered flag)
[NSCS] 2016 Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway (Jimmie Johnson won in his special #48 Lowe's/Superman [Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice] Chevy SS)

2022
[NCS] 2022 Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (Joey Logano took home the win after making the pass on Kyle Busch and held off/survived a late-race charge by Busch in the closing laps of the race)

Full Race Replay (2007 Subway Fresh Fit 500[k] at Phoenix International Raceway):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhLlZ60YQZ4

My Photos (had to go dig them out of my Facebook page from a post way back in 2011):

Spoiler: 2007 Subway Fresh Fit 500(k) photos

 

[Cola83]

I'll Keep this short... My 1st NASCAR race was at Talladega August 1974..

I saw the King Win.... #43 - Richard Petty - He finished first, started 3rd and lead 34 laps in a Dodge.

About the only thing I remember from the race was that it was super HOT and I mean HOT and I saw Richard Petty Win..