I can smell all kinds of things: hot dogs, burgers, deep fried fixin’s that I know taste like heaven — all of it bad for me. But most I smell racing fuel.<\/p>\n
I’m standing on a riser inside the winners circle at the Daytona international speedway. We are here for the 52nd running of what many call “the great American race.”<\/p>\n
The scene in front of me is a sea of fans. Nearly 200,000 people are sitting or standing on the aluminum benches. Lots of them are sitting inside the infield watching the race from their wheeled motor home mansions, drinking beer and grilling just about anything you can imagine.<\/p>\n
There are so many race fans that they look like little multi-colored dots on a painting. I know they’re real but they look fake.<\/p>\n
Nascar says it wants to increase its base by mixing up the fans – hooking in more women and minorities. They want a bigger slice of America’s money. It’s the American way.<\/p>\n
I’ve been fortunate enough to have covered a few of these 500’s as a reporter, and each time its a rush.<\/p>\n
These cars are whizzing by, screaming, hell-bent on winning at nearly all costs. It’s a blur of bright\u00a0 colors painted beautifully on fiberglass and metal.<\/p>\n
My heart’s pounding hard and fast as 43 race cars Tear past me.<\/p>\n
Off to the left, the cars are out of site. I’m waiting as they make their way around the 2.5 mile Trioval track. It takes the lead car 49 seconds to come full circle; I counted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I can smell all kinds of things: hot dogs, burgers, deep fried fixin’s that I know taste like heaven — all of it bad for me. But most I smell racing fuel. I’m standing on a riser inside the winners circle at the Daytona international speedway. We are here for the 52nd running of what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}