Fans add to good times at Charlotte Motor Speedway

Apparently everyone drives fast at a NASCAR race.

This was clear five minutes after arriving at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Saturday afternoon. As I stepped out of the credential trailer, a golf cart came tearing through the gravel parking lot, kicking up a little cloud of dirt.

Giddy up.

This wasn’t my first NASCAR rodeo. Eighteen years ago, I took off from work on a Monday for the March race in Atlanta after rain postponed it a day.

I was underdressed for that race, and had to borrow a friend’s sweatshirt to make it through 500 miles. I was overdressed Saturday, wearing jeans and a golf shirt on a shorts and T-shirt kind of day.

Not that anyone noticed.

More than four hours before the start of qualifying for the Sprint All-Star Race, the infield crowd was focused on the stage in Turn 1, where country music act Little Big Town was playing a free concert. Well, those close enough were facing the stage.

About half the fans had their backs to Little Big Town, and were gazing at the 200-foot-wide by 80-foot-tall, high-def videoboard on the back straightaway.

Nearer to the action, several packs of fans were testing the shocks in their pick-ups as they formed mini-mosh pits in the beds of their trucks while Little Big Town jammed through a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.”

Jeff Boyer threw a party in the back of his 2004 Chevy Silverado for a couple dozen of his closest friends.

“At one point I had 26 people in here,” Boyer said. “Only in a Chevy.”

Actually, two spots down from Boyer’s tailgate party, a Dodge Ram 1500 was holding its own under the weight of several swaying revelers.

But back to Boyer. The 45-year-old moved to Charlotte from Florida in 1997 to work for the Buck Baker Racing School (now Seat Time), which has helped such drivers as Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman make the transition to stock cars.

Boyer has done his own racing over the years, as well, driving in the ARCA series and in a weekly dirt track series at Millbridge Speedway in Salisbury.

But for the past six years, Boyer has hosted a party for the all-star race, inviting friends from as close as his Timber Forest neighborhood, a mile away in Harrisburg, and as far as Germany.

Boyer’s crew brought 40 cases of beer for 100 people – and no food. With all the food vendors ringing the track – including one selling a 6.5-pound burrito – Boyer and Co. decided to concentrate on staying, um, hydrated.

Boyer arrived at the track at 11 a.m. Saturday and planned to stay until midnight – “maybe later,” he said, holding a Miller Lite snug in a beer koozie.

Karen Fairchild, one of two female vocalists for Little Big Town, understood her target audience. As the Grammy-winning band wrapped up its set, Fairchild yelled into her mic: “Thank you, Charlotte. We love you guys. Get your day drinking on.”

Judging by the piles of crushed domestic beer cans dotting the infield grass, many had obliged. There was nary a craft brew bottle among them.

But the all-star race wasn’t only a beer-chugging, country music-loving crowd.

Shane Duffy brought four kids – his two children, his nephew and one of their friends – from Charleston to Charlotte for a three-day weekend of camping, racing and eating.

They parked their RV in the family campground outside Turn 4 on Friday and the kids commenced to eating all of Duffy’s snacks and sugary drinks. So Duffy wasn’t feeling the $7 waffle cones his son Gavin was eying Saturday.

“That’s quite expensive,” said Duffy, who grew up in Ireland. “I think we’ll give that a miss.”

Duffy brings his family to Charlotte to a couple of Panthers’ games every year, and comes to the track once every couple of years. Gavin Duffy, 14, a ninth-grader, has the same heart condition (hypoplastic left heart syndrome) that Panthers tight end Greg Olsen’s son was born with three years ago.

Duffy was a Formula 1 fan growing up in Ireland. But he likes the family-friendly atmosphere at the Charlotte races.

“It’s more hanging out, the camping, the experience, the people you meet,” Duffy said. “There’s so much more to it than just watching cars go around an oval for hours.”

This story was originally published May 16, 2015 at 8:35 PM with the headline "Fans add to good times at Charlotte Motor Speedway."