Twittering away the day at Bristol Motor Speedway, part 1

We're hanging at Bristol for race day, and over on Twitter, I'm offering up a running commentary. Follow there, and check out what's been happening at Bristol so far. (Note: this is in reverse chronological order, so if you want the real feel, start at the bottom and work up.) 

I bust on the NASCAR fans, but seriously--you need to go to a race in your life. Great experience. Much less scary than blue-starters think.

http://twitpic.com/evn6l  - Part 3: the line at the Degree deodorant booth.

http://twitpic.com/evmyl  - Part 2: the line at the Skoal dip booth.

http://twitpic.com/evmsl  - A 3-part photo essay on NASCAR nation. Part 1: the line at the camel cigs tent.

http://twitpic.com/evkc2  - Best logo ever. Bonus: I apparently caught someone in witness protection on camera.

http://twitpic.com/evjaa  - I am preparing to descend into the madness that is the Bristol fan zone.

http://twitpic.com/evhti  - Just did a few pace car laps. Felt like I was getting sucked down a drain.

http://twitpic.com/evhrj  - Great gesture to honor Mark Martin's 1000th start.

http://twitpic.com/eva3g  - A shot of the RV-laden hills outside the track. Can you spot the Obama voter?

http://twitpic.com/ev2vk  - Bristol shows me some love.

Best sign on the way up: a strip club named "New Beginnings." Better than "Baby Needs Diapers And Daddy's Gone Back To His Wife," I guess.

http://twitpic.com/euyl7  - Made it!

http://twitpic.com/euqve  - There's some badass Transylvania-level fog in the TN foothills now.

http://twitpic.com/eugnk  - You think Bruce Wayne realizes this sign exists?

http://twitpic.com/eueri  - If you look closely, you can see the gov'mint men in the hills lookin' to bust up the moonshine stills.

http://twitpic.com/euaud  - Right after I snapped this shot, Brian Vickers shoved this whole display over.

Rolling now to Bristol. Sweet heaven, is it early.

Secrets of driving Bristol, from a guy who's done it often

I've seen hot tubs bigger than Bristol. Seriously. The kinds of hot tubs that Hollywood stars get photographed in -- seriously, those things are nearly as big as Bristol. It's a tight little bowl of a track, a half-mile cup that's one-fifth the size of Daytona or Talladega. It's so small that when the field is running at full 43-car strength, it stretches halfway around the track. 

I took some pace car laps around Bristol early Saturday afternoon, with former Sprint Cup driver Brett Bodine at the wheel. And the entire time, I felt like I was swirling down into a drain. You cruise the straightaways, you can feel yourself leaning into the center. You hit the curves, and you can feel your internal organs start to shift. Your limbs get heavy, your gut presses back deep into the seat. And at Bristol, the drivers will do this 500 times. 500. I think we did six laps, but I honestly don't know -- it all blurred into one mass of walls, retaining fences and seats.

It's a nerve-wracking track, and at the speeds they're going, NASCAR drivers get around it in about 15 seconds. So you'd figure you'd have to be up on the wheel all the time, right? Wrong. That's the way to put yourself out of the race in a hurry.

"It's a track where you can't relax, but you have to relax," says Bodine, who ran more than 14,000 laps here over 31 races. Just before the first time he drove at Bristol, Junior Johnson pulled him aside and demonstrated how to survive at the track -- relax your hands, one at a time, in the straightaways. If not, your hands cramp up and you can't react quickly enough.

And by the same token, the way this track sets up, you've got to be looking far down the track. Your spotter has to be watching down the turns, because you can't see that far, but it's up to you to react. That's racing in Thunder Valley, and it's going to make for a hell of a spectacle.

Bodine also thinks the track's recent reworking -- a project that took some of the banking out of the turns -- is actually beneficial and will make for some great racing. We're about to find out whether he's right.

(Note: We're in Bristol for the race. You can follow our minute-by-minute updates all Saturday by checking out the Twitter feed.)

Martin's revival keeps drummin' | TriCities

Martin's revival keeps drummin' | TriCities: "Kyle Busch earned the No. 15, while fan-favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start from the 27th spot.

Earnhardt said he could never find a comfort zone in his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.

“I couldn’t get in the corner, it was really loose in and it would just push off,” Earnhardt said. “We will see how it goes. The Chevrolet was good in race trim. We couldn’t get anything going in qualifying trim.

“We will just have to be good on pit road and be smart on the race track, but I think we have a pretty good race car.”"

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