This was a NASCAR exhibition race where they turned the running track and football field at the historic Los Angeles Coliseum into a short track for an exhibition race. Here is what it looked like.
But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Our day started by driving to the downtown area where we parked at the 7th and Fig lot and had lunch at a restaurant there. From there, we took the train to the Coliseum. Here is the train station from the outside and the inside.
This day was not only the Clash at the Coliseum, but also the NFL Superbowl Experience at the Los Angeles Convention Center. So the subway, and downtown LA were very busy. There were extra subway employees and police all around the area and the homeless were suspiciously in short supply. Amazing what the city can hide when there are very large and very public events taking place. Anyway, this is a travel blog, not a political blog so I will move on.
We rode the train to the Coliseum and arrived before the first heat race started. Here is what we saw upon arrival.
It was very exciting and there were a lot more people there than I expected. As we searched for our seats, we passed my new favorite place to eat, even thought we didn’t eat there because we were still full.
We found our seats and watched the first heat race. There were 12 cars racing with the top 3 making it into the main race. World Famous Aunt Barbara’s favorite driver, Denny Hamlin #11, was in this race.
He led with 33 laps to go, held that and won the race.
So Denny made it into the main event. The second heat race was also exciting and was followed by a concert by Pitbull. It turns out Pitbull is one of two owners of Trackhouse Racing, which has Daniel Suarez, the number 99 car, racing for them. Daniel was also racing in the main event. The concert was pretty good and the crowd was definitely into it.
Then it was on to the main event. There were 23 cars on that tiny track. The heat races only had 12 cars each and it was loud. When all 23 cars were roaring around the track, it was not only loud, you could feel the vibration in your chest.
After the first several laps, a car had mechanical trouble and had to leave the race. Why did it have to be Denny?
The main event was a 150 lap race, with a “race break” at lap 75. That was when rapper Ice Cube performed. If you asked me to make a list of performers who I would expect to see at the Race Break, Ice Cube would not have been on that list. That being said, he did an outstanding job and the crowd really seemed to enjoy it. Kudos to NASCAR for thinking so far outside of the box. It really worked at this event.
Here is Cousin Ed’s favorite driver, Chase Elliott, who finished eleventh.
And here is Cousin Mike’s favorite driver, Kyle Larson, who ended up finishing fifth.
And here is Aunt Barbara’s other favorite driver, Christopher Bell, who finished eighth.
With about 20 laps left in the race, some young guy in what looked like a race suit was escorted down our aisle. He stopped in front of Cindy when several people behind us started yelling, “Tyler, Tyler.” I figured he may be a driver, so I put my fist up hoping for a fist bump. He looked right at me, gave me the fist bumb, and walked on to wherever he was being led. Turned out it was Tyler Reddick, the number 8 car driver, who had been knocked out of the race. I am now a Tyler Reddick fan. Here he is from a stock photo off of the internet.
At the end of the race, it was the number 22 car, driven by Joey Logano that crossed the finish line first. He is the yellow car you can barely see in the lower right side of the picture.
And here he is shrouded in the smoke he created doing victory donuts.
We really had a blast at “The Clash” and plan on attended an actual cup series race in the near future. The only negative thing about the whole event was something we saw as we were walking back to the train after the race.
Only in LA.
Our next trip is Cindy and I finally going to the big island of Hawaii for a week of fun in the sun and hopefully safely seeing some volcanic activity. Stay tuned!