Hometown Track Happiness

I spent this past weekend at what I affectionately call my happy place: Sonoma Raceway. I live about a 20-minute drive south of the venue and the annual date at the track is one of my favorite weekends of the year – outside of family commitments, of course. Just as I have for the past few years, I got to be an official photographer for Frontstretch and it’s always an amazing experience and privilege, especially at a road course with all the different options and vantage points to shoot from. Plus, the unexpected eight cautions in the NASCAR Cup Series race really helped me traverse all the turns before the halfway point of the race!

And what a weekend on track it was too with Shane van Gisbergen muscling his way past a not-so-amused Austin Hill on a late-race caution to record his second win a row in the Xfinity Series. Then the California kid, Kyle Larson, got it done on Sunday in the Cup race with a stirring and popular late run through the field, based on the noise of the crowd roaring him on, on a picture-perfect day in wine country.

I was in turn 8 for the closing laps. When Martin Truex Jr. got past Chris Buescher and then Kyle Larson went ahead the next lap, the photographer next to me looked and shrugged. Yes, you have the pylon but the fact is when you’re in a particular corner it’s really hard to understand what is happening elsewhere on the track. And this pair of battles for position caught us both somewhat by surprise.

As I drove out of the track, sunburned, knackered and with a huge grin on my face, it got me thinking about two things – the significance of a home track and the importance of the track on the overall NASCAR schedule. I’ll start with the former.

Truth be told, I never wanted to move to NorCal. I was settled and happy living in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, availing myself of the always-on New York City lifestyle – albeit paying an exorbitant, aka extortionate, amount to rent a sliver of real estate at the top of a fourth floor walkup, replete with rats the size of small house cats, on MacDougal Street, half a block from Union Square. But my then wife was insistent that she wanted to move home to San Francisco and despite the allure of the Big Apple, I knew that starting a family in New York was not going to be an easy proposition. But despite that I was still reticent.

So we came out west for a visit. And knowing my love for NASCAR, my ex suggested we make Sonoma Raceway one of our…