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Luckily I didn’t encounter Jason at Camp Crystal Lake so on a day that could have spelt disaster (d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r there, that spells disaster), the superstitions of Friday the 13th failed to hit. I did have a near miss at the ticket collection window at Daytona when I went to collect my ticket which they had previously assured my that they hadn’t posted to me, when they checked and couldn’t find it they decided they had posted it, so they had to print another one off for me, so all was fine.

After a morning of pootling around I decided to head for Daytona just after 2, fortunately the hotel I’d booked was ideally placed for getting to Daytona, literally one turn and then onto the interstate and then head in the direction of Daytona for 40 miles. The biggest problem with doing the journey solo is that you have to read the directions whilst doing (ahem) 70 in the outside lane, which meant I missed the suggested route into the circuit, but I knew that I was still heading in roughly the right direction, and in the end I reckon I had a smoother journey in than most.

Being a veteran of motor racing, I was a little surprised at the set-up for the parking but I reckon it worked. Basically the general parking was about 2-3 miles from the circuit and they’d opened up a cross country dirt-track route for courtesy buses to take to avoid the traffic. Fine except the drop off point was still about a ¼ of a mile from the circuit on the other side of a 4 lane highway, so we had to trudge our way over the bridge.

Daytona is big, but then for a 2.5 mile tri-oval what do you expect? I found the ticket collection window, ¼ of a mile in the wrong direction from my seat, I found my seat (after over shooting and climbing too many stairs for my liking) and I found the merchandising area another ¼ of a mile past the ticket collection window, so did a fair bit of walking, but I guess that’s not a bad thing.

The one thing I hadn’t properly accounted for was the drop in temperature when it got dark. The race itself didn’t start until 8 pm, so when I left for the race in the afternoon it was in the mid 20s and t-shirt weather, by 8 o’clock it wasn’t. Fortunately there were a lot of people in the stands and we were a bit crammed in, and the girl next to me had a fleece so at least my left arm was slightly warmer.

The race itself was pretty spectacular, two major incidents and some extremely close racing with both the first two finishers having fought their way through the field to get to the front.

The journey back was a lot smoother than expected, after using some pretty impressive drafting and overtaking manoeuvres to get back to the bus queue and spotting a new line opening up just as I got there, I must have been in the first set of buses to get back to the car park. As the numbers of people getting back to the car park was regulated the queues to get out were non-existent so was back at the hotel within an hour of getting on the bus, which compared to most motor racing events is a minor miracle.

When I got back Rag had arrived so we had a chat and we bought some beers for him and toasted the journey to come.

Today is another chilled start with the fun to come later when the final two arrive and I have the task of trying to get a bigger vehicle.