The race cars are here
I know nothing about auto racing (except that Dave Letterman had a piece of the winner of the Indy 500 this year). But on a noontime errand today, I was held up by a long, police-escorted caravan of 16-wheelers headed west over the Broadway Bridge into downtown Portland. Many of the trailers on the big rigs announced that they were part of an auto racing team. Presumably the fast cars were inside.
There's no race track downtown, and so I guess these guys are headed somewhere -- the Hilton? To show off the cars before a Rose Festival race this weekend?
Wonder what kind of mileage those guys are getting.
| Posted at 12:52 PM | Permalink |
|
Comments (8)
Dunno why they were headed downtown, but this is the race in question.
Posted by The One True b!X | June 16, 2004 1:04 PM
They have a "parade" down Broadway to highlight the race. It's a holdover from when racer weekend at PIR brought in 100,000+ people.
Once they got to the west side, the multi-million racecars disembarked from the trucks and rolled down Broadway.
And for random trivia, did you know that racecar spelled backwards is racecar?
Posted by Scott | June 16, 2004 1:23 PM
I knew my readers would have the lowdown on this. Having your own blog is such a luxury.
Posted by Jack Bog | June 16, 2004 1:27 PM
Glad I could help.
Posted by Scott | June 16, 2004 1:35 PM
It's the Champ Cars (unsponsored, so it's not the G.I. Joe race this year or the Freightliner race, as it has been in past years), dude! They may not be back next year - there's a battle with a rival group to get a spot at PIR next year, but Paul Newman owns at least one Champ Car team this year.
I'll be looking for him there on Sunday (with his 'Old Guys Rule' cap), with probably 40K other people (way down from 100K, as was mentioned...)
Saturday, I'll be part of the pit crew at a dirt track in St. Helens.
If you told me two years ago that I'd be doing this on a kids-free weekend, and that I'd thoroughly enjoy it as well, I would have laughed heartily in your face.
Posted by Betsy | June 16, 2004 5:10 PM
>Once they got to the west side, the multi-million racecars disembarked from the trucks and rolled down Broadway.>
When did this happen? I observed the police escorted caravan at Broadway and SW Taylor at about 12:30-12:45.
Posted by AFS | June 16, 2004 8:41 PM
As you might suspect, I am SO all over this.
Posted by NASCAR girl | June 17, 2004 10:55 AM
AFS - my bad, I left my office by the time they had come through yesterday. I used to walk down and watch them roll by every year and assumed it was the same this year.
Posted by Scott | June 17, 2004 11:22 AM