AMS Summer Night Race

The weekend is finally here for The Quaker State 400 at AMS. Going to be a little different for us this time. We've never been to a night race at AMS. We are really looking forward to it. It will definitely be a lot warmer than the last time we were in Atlanta for a race. 

The Race weekend was great. Two of my cousins come up from South Georgia. We had the weekend all planned out. Starting of with the Alsco Uniforms 250 Xfinity race. We were pulling for #21 Austin Hill. Great racing all night long. Austin was doing well and with three laps left in the race Parker Klingerman spun out Austin denying him from a 3-peat at Atlanta Motor Speedway. 

Sunday we got to the track about 12:30pm and set up our first (hopefully annually) tailgate at AMS. Got the tent set up then the grill and chairs. We went and walked around The Fan Zone. Got to see Corey LaJoie signing autographs. Christie and I got Tickets to Daytona or Las Vegas. After heading back to the truck we decided that it was time to get cooking. Noel opened the tote realizing he left the foil and the seasoning for the steaks in his truck, still parked at the hotel. We asked the security in reserved parking and asked if we could leave and come back because someone had made a party foul. The security lady was super sweet and allowed us to leave so we could go to the backup plan at Lovejoy's Walmart. After heading back to the track we were ready to get cooking. Noel brought some shrimp that was in the ocean on Thursday and on the griddle Sunday.  Along with the shrimp we had steak. 

After eating we head into the track. The prerace concert had Andy Grammer performing. Then we got had the Driver intros. Before the National Anthem three skydivers were coming out of the clouds one with a 4ever Harvick flag, one with a Georgia flag, and one with and American Flag. The 4ever Harvick skydiver landed first then the Georgia flag and the skydiver with the American flag landed during the national anthem. They gave the command for Start Your Engines was done by Richard Childress who was sitting in the #29 car Harvick drove in The Cracker Barrel Old Country Store 500 on March 11,2001 at Atlanta Motor Speedway Race where Harvick won just weeks after Dale Earnhardt was tragically killed in the Daytona 500. Richard Childress lead the pace for two laps while Harvick in the #4 pulled up and the two drove side by side. I'm pretty sure that there wasn't a dry eye at the track during that moment. The race began and the driver's battled all the way until the end of the rain shortened race. Chastain got involved in a wreck on lap 123 and pretty much finished Ross's day. Suarez finished in 2nd and had a good run most of the night. Lightning stuck and AMS asked everyone to leave the stands. As we were heading down the race was called with William Byron being the winner. All in all a great weekend. Now we wait for September and head to Bristol.