Ok, I am finally recovered from my 5am to 9pm day at the track on Sunday enough to relive it!  Honestly, I do not know how the teams keep these schedules but they claim it becomes routine.  So here is the report from the garage on Sunday!

When I arrived, I first checked in at the garage.  The crew was going over the car with a fine tooth comb and doing their individual checklists before final inspection.  It took them about 2.5 hours to work over the car.   While they were doing that I sauntered out to our excellent pit stall (the Miller Lite pit was the last pit by the main grandstands, right in front of Victory Lane with a huge opening next to it so I could get up nice and close as you will see...).  

I don't get to spend as much time with the over-the-wall guys as I do with the mechanics, so I reintroduced msyelf to the ones I knew and got to know the few I had not yet met.  They are also a great bunch of guys and were very entertaining in their answers to my questions for the website.   They are pretty stoked we are focusing on them for the new Miller Lite Racing.com website.   We also got a great video with Larry, the rear tire carrier, who walks us through everything they do to get the tires set up on race day.  He sounded like he had done it on tape a million times...several of the guys put a sign "Pit Tours By Larry" up during our filming so unfortunately you can hear me laughing on tape but Larry was most impressed by the fact he didn't cuss once. 

We had to book it back to the garage to meet up with the crew so we could finish the rest of the video about the shocks.  The inspectors remembered us from yesterday (in fact the inspector giving Luke bunny ears in the picture from the blog from yesterday worked the Miller Lite pit during the race).   They guys continued on through inspection and I went off in search of a few more interviews.  I was lucky to catch Pat Tryson, Kurt's crew chief, hanging outside the hauler (he is rarely outside) and he was kind enough to spend 15 minutes talking with me.  Look for a blog about that conversation where he was very candid about the car.   I also did an interview with the only female mechanic at Penske, Andrea Mueller.  She told me how she got started in motorsports and some reactions to women in NASCAR. Of course I will have an entire blog on that as well.

I also had the pleasure of finally meeting one of our own...RA6AN was in the garages on Sunday and she took a minute to peel herself off Carl Edwards to take this picture with me:

Yea!! FOXSports Bloggers Unite!!  It was an absolute pleasure to meet her finally.

My "boss" had a friend with him who loves NASCAR and got to be in the garage for the first time so she and I stalked out a spot right by the gate that the drivers had to walk through to go to driver introductions and we just stood there and watched the parade.    She is a big Tony Stewart fan but I swear Tony recognized me and definitely gave us the stink eye to not ask him for an autograph...the people behind us didn't get the message and got turned down.  Jeff Gordon had the perfect body guard, his daughter in his arms, and no one went near him!   Dale Jr and Schrub both bolted, literally ran from their haulers out the gate so no good pictures of them today...Jr must have known I was out there stalking!   Some of the pictures I took from intro's will be up in my Hot or Not blog tomorrow.

Just before the race started I got the best porta - potty shot yet!   LOL  

The race started off very promising with Kurt running up front for the first third of the race.  He was locking up the right front every time he had to stand on the brakes and was sliding around the turns with no grip but he thought if they took the bump stops out they might have a good setup.  Unfortunately, after the first caution, he got shuffled back to mid pack and ended up getting hit by Scott Pruett and it created a bad tire rub.  They had to bring the car in to fix it and Kurt went a lap down and never recovered.   It was very disappointing for the entire team.  Knowing how hard they work on the car all weekend and the tough luck this team has had this year, it was just a heart breaker.  I did however, get some great shots of the pit crew in action.  Here is just one of many that will be up on the website:

I am pretty much right there in the middle of all the action!   After the race, I remained in the middle of it all as the top 10 cars pulled onto pit road for post race inspection, guess who stopped right in front of me.  My buddy Tony!

He and Juan Pablo Montoya were commiserating about being wrecked and not being able to win.  I thought for sure Tony would be going after Harvick but he seemed incredibly restrained...I moved up the row of cars to where they were interviewing Jeff Gordon, Casey Mears and Clint Bowyer.   I heard a rumor that you could see me on TV in Gordon's post race interview!   On my way back towards Victory Lane, I stopped and grabbed as many lugnuts as I could fit in my pockets, ya never know when you'll need a stocking stuffer!  I managed to get close enough to get this shot of Kyle and crew:

It was very funny to see them all drinking wine.   I was completely sunburnt and exhausted by this time and at least 5 pounds heavier from all the lugnuts in my pockets, so I headed home.   Words can barely describe what it is like to be in the garages with hot pass access and I cannot thank Miller Lite and the #2 enough for being so good to me.   The next race I will be "working" is the August race at Michigan so I hope to keep us entertained with some more detailed blogs from my adventures in the garage.  Also, if there are particular driver pictures you would like to see just let me know in the comments and if I have them I will post them.   As always, thanks for reading!