Infineon: Raceway Fun

Last Friday afternoon and Saturday were a lot of fun. I spent them at Infineon Raceway, as a press guest of the course’s corporate sponsor. I got to see practice sessions, qualifying runs and/or races in four different car classes:

• IndyCar
• Indy Pro (developmental league for the Indy Racing League)
• Grand-Am
• Historic Grand Prix

My media pass gave me close-up access to many areas of the track normally off-limits to spectators, so I brought my two Pentax *ist D DSLR bodies along with me, respectively mated to two autofocus zooms; a Pentax-labeled (and Tamron-designed) 28-200mm (~42-300mm effective with the camera’s smaller-than-35mm sensor) and Sigma’s 170-500mm (~255-750mm effective…yes, I also brought a monopod!).

I’ll pass along my DSLR experiences and 6.1 Mpixel results in a future post; for now, I’ll just say that they neatly synergized with the suggestions I made in a recent feature article. For now, I thought I’d share some commentary and images (ironically captured with my 1.3 Mpixel camera phone ) I took on Friday afternoon as I was wandering around, exploring the facilities and revisiting youthful memories (my dad and I used to go to Indy 500 qualifications every year). Click on the image thumbnails for full-sized JPEGs.

Your esteemed senior technical editor, in all of his distorted and overexposed ‘glory’

I spent Friday afternoon’s race observation time in the main grandstands, which are right behind pit row. Check out the antennas jutting into the air from each pit.

They’re in constant communication with telematics sensors installed in the vehicles. Whenever a race car was out on the track, its pit crew huddled around one or multiple display screens, as these folks are doing. And, I suspect, the limited live information monitoring was supplemented by a more indepth diagnostics data-dump-and-investigation after the car headed back to the garage. Then-EDN technical editor Markus Levy wrote an indepth article called ‘The High-Tech Race Car: A Technological Road Warrior‘, published on December 19, 1996, which I commend to your inspection for more information.

Liquid refreshments for sale predictably included drinks spiked with both alcohol and caffeine.

Speaking of legal drugs, oral tobacco samples were available, too….but only if you were 18 or over, thereby explaining the stern old-timer in uniform at the entrance.

Other exhibiting vendors hawked military duty, personal security, animal advocacy…

…and Danica Patrick, whose visage and souvenirs were everywhere. She may be the pretty-faced ‘poster child’ for the IRL, but trust me, she’s the real deal. She qualified second for Sunday’s race and finished sixth.

Cars in the parking lot spanned the spectrum, from sleek Ferraris to elderly Volkswagens.

Speaking of Volkswagens, my diminutive Eurovan Camper and I spent Friday night in the midst of the race teams’ massive luxury coaches.

My vehicle’s barely visible between the black and white buses on one end of the line.

Here’s a closer view.