NASCAR Montreal

Roughly a year ago my family took a trip to the NASCAR race in Long Pond Pennsylvania. It was a well documented trip, with my aunt taking thousands of photo’s and my writing about the experience, which, in case you’re not caught up, you can read here. This year we were again taking a summer vacation to watch the good ol’ boys turn left, but instead of taking the party south of the border we gave the trip an interesting twist: NASCAR came North.

That’s right, the distinctly American car racing franchise came to Canada - to Quebec no less - and you can rest assured that I was there to bring you the story, along with it the antics of my dad (Bob), Uncle Bruce (the hero in last year’s column), Grandpa Alan and a fellow named Clayton.

The journey began in my driveway (many of my journey’s begin there) and our destination was Montreal, where the NASCAR Busch series was running a road race at the Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve. The track is a yearly stop for the Formula 1 series, and with NASCAR is expanding at the rate of Lendale White’s trousers, they decided to bring their road-show to Montreal and test the Canadian waters for race fans.

I have been to Montreal before, in 2002, on a road trip with some friends. Seeing as how we slept in a Toyota 4-Runner (4 of us!) that trip, I had low and easy to meet expectations that my experience in La Belle Province in ‘07 was going to be exceedingly satisfactory. You see, there’s a reason to be excited about our French neighbours; many good things have come out of Quebec, and specifically Montreal. Of course, the Montreal Canadiens have won more Stanley Cups than any other NHL franchise. Many goaltenders and fine hockey players have emerged from the city and province. Guy Lafleur used to smoke cigarettes in between periods which is impossibly hardcore. And on top of that I’m almost certain that if not for the Referendum in 1995, Quebec would be a wildly popular destination for tourists all across Canada. Well, that and if they didn’t hate English people so much.

It’s about a 5 or 6 hour drive and as is the case in almost all road trips, the going is always filled with humor and excitement, while the drive home is, shall we say, slightly less enthusiastic. Nonetheless, Uncle Bruce kept us in stitches.

About an hour or so into the drive, we were eating various snacks, Uncle Bruce asked, “Do you know what would be really great right now?” Expecting the obligatory Uncle Bruce joke about booze, sex or worse, I was preparing to cringe and force a polite chuckle. After all, one does not need to hear this type of humor from his Uncle, if he is forced to hear it. But Uncle Bruce surprised me; “A Joe Louis.” You have to understand, the man is 56-years-old.

As we approached Quebec the topic of conversation naturally turned towards jokes about how little we know about the language and culture. We imitated French accents, spoke French in sentence fragments, and generally giggled at ourselves. We are very mature. We passed a tattoo parlor and it gave mean idea; “I’ll give $100 to the man who gets the Fleur de Lis tattooed on his ass.” I was, of course, joking but after the laughter subsided and was follwed by a contemplative pause, Uncle Bruce needed details. “How big?”

The next day we went to scope out the track and get our bearings. The unfortunate thing about our hotel though is that there were two elevators for over 30 floors. This meant long waits, especially on race weekend, for the elevator. While crammed in on our way to the lobby we stopped at one floor where a couple and their two small children wanted to get on. But the elevator was full. After the required awkward smile, the doors closed and we expected to keep moving down, when then the doors slid open again. Same kids, same parents. The little ones decided it would be ‘fun’ to push the down button again, thus opening our doors and wasting our time. The parents said nothing, simply stood there and let the kids screw around with the elevator. The doors closed and then opened again. These people should not have children. But as the doors closed and opened again Uncle Bruce took matters into his own hands, telling the children (in front of their parents no less) to, “Go play in the street.”

There is only one way into the track and we were disheveled to find that it would be a 35-minute walk to our seats. It was the hottest day of summer, we had a senior citizen with a heart condition in our party, and I don’t care much for walking in the first place. We hiked in to our seats and baked in the sun for hours, drinking watered down Budweiser and watching the cars practice. Some people (I think the guys I was with are these people) might find this sort of thing amusing; I wanted to end it all right there. Hours of boredom compounded by bad food and drink, multiplied by intense heat (I had to put on sunscreen 4 times. 4!) and loud, drunk French guys (okay, they were funny) made it a long day. Sadly, by the time we got back to the hotel and stood in the 20-minute line for the elevators I could care less about NASCAR.

That night Barry Bonds might have hit a record-tying home run, but I wouldn’t know, because I fell asleep with the TV on and when I woke up the game was over. In the morning we found a Tim Horton’s (Dunkin Donuts but with drinkable coffee), grabbed coffee and breakfast and mapped out the day. The race wasn’t until 4, and we weren’t going to sit in the grandstand for another 7 hours (you only make that mistake once, except for the drunk French guys, who were more than joyful to do it twice) so we made plans to go for the Busch qualifying, which was then followed by the race an hour after.

My buddy Mark has a theory about the NASCAR Busch series. He thinks it’s absolutely ludicrous to have drivers from the Nextel Cup series (Kevin Harvick, Robby Gordon, Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards) competing against the Busch drivers. The reason he thinks it’s ridiculous is because he can’t think of any other sport where they let the best in the business go up against people of obviously lesser talent. I tried to explain that they’re different cars, they’re not as fast, blah blah blah - he wasn’t having it. In a related story Mark doesn’t even like or watch car racing, nor does he care about the outcome.

It just so happened that this race, in Montreal, Quebec featured a driver from that very same city. Former Open Wheel Racing star Patrick Carpentier rode in his first ever NASCAR race, and as he took the track for qualifying the crowd went into a frenzy (it was tempting to say a ‘frenchy’ but that would be so lame). Our seats were in Turns 1 and 2, a busy spot, prone to accidents and un-pleasantries, but each time Carpentier rounded the bend the crowd exploded into a cheer I didn’t understand as anything other than encouragement. Perhaps fueled by the support of the hometown crowd, Carpentier won the pole much to the delight of my well-liquored neighbours.

This gave the race some added anticipation, as now the locals believed Carpentier could win. When it finally got underway the big guns from the Nextel Cup were forced to start in the back of the pack, as they were late for qualifying, after flying in from Pennsylvania. However, they quickly advanced up the leader board perhaps lending credence to Mark’s theory. The race was exciting, but a series of cautions towards the end of the race slowed things down a great deal. Then, on the last lap, there were fireworks that were worth waiting for. Marcus Ambrose was leading with a few laps to go when he and Robby Gordon got tangled up during a caution. Gordon was black flagged but refused to go to 13th spot, his assigned position, instead re-starting in second place. He immediately took Ambrose out in the first corner, his first possible chance, and went by him into first place. However, because he ignored the black flag he was actually in 18th, meaning Kevin Harvick was the new race leader. Meanwhile, a few laps previous Harvick had spun out Ron Fellows, Jeff Burton and Andy Pilgrim to move up to second.

Eventually Harvick got the win, Carpentier finished second and both, along with Gordon, delighted fans in our grandstand with burnouts. Robby Gordon thought he had won, Harvick knew he did, and Carpentier was milking the experience for everything it was worth.

Mark’s theory figures may hold some relevance concerning the outcome of the race. Harvick, the eventual winner, screwed lesser-known drivers out of their chance at victory and displayed that he was a far more talented than everyone else by powering his way to the front of the pack after starting around 40th position. Robby Gordon, another Nextel Cup regular, revealed that he could have cared less about the Busch Series and drove manically, eventually costing Marcus Ambrose his first win. So maybe Mark’s right; maybe the guys from ‘the show’ need to stay up there and race where they believe it matters.

Other race notes: Jesus was well represented in Montreal, not necessarily by Christians (though he may have been) but by a car. Victory in Jesus is the ride driven by Morgan Shepherd, and I actually overheard people in the stands calling it the ‘Jesus car.’ The Jesus car features a cross, the ‘Victory in Jesus’ paint job and the phrase ‘Racing For Souls’ across the back bumper in order to ensure the other drivers that Mr. Shepherd is not actually racing for victory. Though Jesus may care about being a linebacker, he is decidedly unconcerned with car racing, as Shepherd finished his day 38th out of a possible 43 cars after completing just 7 laps.

Next year I’ve been promised a spot on staff at the Pocono race in June. I’ll be a proud member of the over-worked, volunteer unit that helps make everything at the track run oh-so-smoothly. I heard a rumor I’ll be responsible for transporting and tapping kegs, which really, when you think about it, is a horrible job.