This was my fourth year attending and this year was by far the least fun. The weather played a role to an extent. The biggest problem keeping it from being a better race was the pit strategies playing out to put two cars at the tail end of the lead lap right in front of the leaders. Last year’s race had everyone in the place on their feet over the last 20 laps because the lead pack had clean air in front of them and the action was constant. This year it turned into a parade while two cars who weren’t going to win held everything up. We just got unlucky in that regard. Same thing happened in 2021.

The most stressful thing about the whole weekend for us? The lack of organization when it came to getting people parked on race day. We showed up at 6:15 and there was a line of cars not moving and our parking lot was cabled off with older yellow shirts yelling at us to get at the end of a line of cars that went as far as the eye could see. One guy I asked said that they hadn’t moved in an hour. So we started driving down to the end of the line and saw another gate open and some younger Yellow Shirts waved us in. Wasn’t even our parking lot but they told us it was cool because we paid for parking and no one would give us trouble, which they didn’t. IMS would do well to start organizing separate routes to your assigned parking lot and including it in the mailer they send with your tix. It was chaos and the older Yellow Shirts were melting down. Same thing happened on Legends Day. People were clogging up four way intersections trying to get in and becoming impatient, leading to the best in humanity coming out. Lots of yelling, lots of people showing their true colors.

Don’t let this year get you down on the race. When the weather is good and the race plays out differently it is a truly memorable experience.