By the time 2pm rolls around, I decide that I'm craving one of those disgusting snack shop burgers. Or maybe I was craving nachos? I usually can never decide until I get up to the counter and really have to announce my selection. Along the way, I find Charles and ask him if he's got any good photos so far. "No," was his reply followed by a hearty laugh. I went with the burger and it turned out to be better than anticipated because the bun seemed rather fluffy and not smashed like it had been cooked hours ago and was sitting in a hot, steaming pile waiting to be microwaved back to life. The fries were super crispy and golden to the point that some of them were still glistening from the oil that also made them translucent. Charles and I decide to walk around the paddock and explore the booths. Plus, there were import models to be seen and photographed. That itself easily kills an hour or two in the day.
I decided to head back to the track towards the end of the open practice session, which is where most of the action is. Instead of watching one car do its thing before the next one takes its run, the drivers all run in what appears to be a random order of pairs and sometimes triplets. The drivers who had something to prove were going all out and really busted up the cars against the barrier walls as they tried to get closer on the main turn. The A Spec AE86 driven by Toshiki Yoshioka, the winner of the Las Vegas leg of Formula D, took a hard, head-first slam into the massive white concrete wall, annihilating the front bumper. I was photographing from a muddy ditch directly behind the concrete barrier Yoshioka crashed into with my head and camera pressed up against the fence to get a closer shot and got hit with a hodgepodge of fiberglass, plastic and rubber like it was a wave in the ocean. I imagined what it would've been like had he gone fast enough to flip over the barrier, which is just tall enough to reach my hip. It wasn't a fun image to think about.
As the sun was setting, the sky turned a deep hue of purple to pink to orange. Jonny and I were walking around the track area when I stopped to take a photo of him while he was saying "hi" to someone he knew. The drivers were starting to line up for the official opening ceremonies when Rob Dyrdek, the Grand Marshall of Formula D came roaring out onto the field in his Rogue Status Camaro, the same Camaro I saw broken down on the side of the highway back in April at the opening round in Long Beach. After the drivers are introduced and the national anthem was sung, all the cars go screeching back to the starting grid, except for Conrad Grunewald whose Nitto Tires Chevy Corvette started leaking oil onto the track and had to be towed off. Dyrdek was also having trouble getting the Camaro off the track because he kept stalling out the car as soon as he would try to take off. Hasn't he driven that car before? Must be harder than it looks. (That's what she said. - SK)
At night, it's easier to see the haze of tire smoke that lingers in the air over the track like a thick fart in a small room. I didn't bring a long zoom lens that most of the photographers out on the track prefer and only brought wide-angle lenses and a few other specialty items to play with. Standing in the same pit area with all the other photographers proved to be tough because I ended up with a photo that looked like I tried to shoot Alcatraz from across the bay on a rainy winter morning in San Francisco. All I could see was a tiny speck at the bottom of the photo that could barely make itself out to be a car, mainly because of the headlights that were on. I decided to position myself so that I could be close to the cars that were either lining up to make a run or coming back from a run. From this vantage point, I was able to grab a few shots of a defeated Rhys Millen congratulating Ryuji Miki, in what turned out to be a massive upset that secured Samuel Hubinette's second-place finish in the overall standings. Guess Ron was right in what he said earlier in the day.