Now what should I bring with me????

For me, one of the biggest challenges in going to an event or facility for the first time is knowing what I’m allowed to bring. Below are some helpful hints and tips on what to bring and what to make your visit to Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis more enjoyable. If you see ‘a must have’ we missed or have a question about feel free to drop us a note!

Parking information - Enter the facility off of U. S. Highway 136 and you will be directed to our parking lots. For most events parking in the facility parking lots is the shortest walk to your seats.

Facility Map – Be sure to download a facility map for your visit to the facility. Click here for maps for the different events.

Comfortable shoes – Many events involve walking from the parking lots to your seating section so wear comfortable shoes to get to the grandstands.

Sunscreen – Protect yourself from the summer rays!

Blanket – If you are taking in an oval race on the world famous Grass Hill in Turn 1 be sure to bring a blanket to spread it out and sit on it during the event.

Bag chair - If you are taking in an oval race on the world famous Grass Hill in Turn 1 be sure to bring a bag chair to sit on during the event. Please note you can’t bring a chair into the reserved seating area or any of the grandstands.

Earplugs – Protect your hearing during the event.

Radio Scanner – For many events you can listen to the drivers as they communicate with their crew members

Cooler – Cooler size is 14x14x14, no glass bottles are allowed.

Food – You are able to bring in food and snacks with you into the events.

Cash – While there are ATM’s for many events it is a good idea to have cash for purchases.

Cell phone – There are no pay phones at the facility so be sure to bring your cell phone.

Sweatshirts – Temperatures cool off quickly when the sun goes down so be sure to bring an extra layer of clothes to ward off a chill.

ChapStick – Being in the sun and wind can take a toll on your lips so be sure to bring a tube of ChapStick.

Sharpie and autograph book – For many events there is an autograph session that takes place prior to the race so be sure to bring a sharpie and autograph book to get autographs from your favorite drivers.

We hope this helps your planning and we can't wait to see you during the course of the season!

Lucas Oil Raceway, new name for a classic facility

Greetings! Happy New Year from In the Groove with Lucas Oil Raceway from the newly renamed Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis which last week entered into a new naming rights agreement with Lucas Oil Products. We are very excited about the new partnership and are looking forward to working with the gang from Lucas Oil.

We also want to thank all of those that helped with the press conference at the AARWBA dinner last Sunday. Check out the guys from Frameworks Marketing Group working to get our logo printed to be used at the Press Conference.

Also thanks to the gang from AARWBA for hosting our press conference and Forrest Lucas for attending the event and the unveiling of the new Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis Logo.

For readers of In the Groove with Lucas Oil Raceway we hope you can join us this weekend at the Cabin Fever Racers Trade Show and Swap Meet taking place at the Kokomo Event Center this Friday and Saturday. Information on the event can be found on their web page.

Also if you are a bracket racer be sure to join us for preseason meetings taking place next week at Eaton Hall at the Brownsburg Town Hall. More information can be found here.

We hope you have a great week and please stop by to say hello if you come to the trade show!

Welcome to the renewal of In The Groove

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes or for this crowd like the return of a Top Fuel dragster after a full engine rebuild, the In The Groove blog has returned. In the coming months and during the course of the 2011 season we hope that you check back often as we want to use In the Groove as a behind the scenes look into the season and many of the events at O’Reilly Raceway Park. We are busily preparing for the coming season and many new items are in the works for the coming year. In case you missed some of the recent announcements they are:

ARCA Returns to O’Reilly Raceway Park during the course of Kroger SpeedFest on July 28th. The night will be called the Thursday Night Triple Header and will feature USAC Midget and Silver Crown Series along with ARCA during the night. This marks the first time ARCA has raced during the same night as the Midgets and Silver Crown. This is also the first time ARCA comes to the track since the mid-80s. Nine-time ARCA Champion Frank Kimmel hasn’t had the chance to race at O’Reilly Raceway Park in his career and was champing at the bit at the press conference and said he couldn’t wait to take to the track.

Also filling out the oval schedule will be the return of USAC Thursday Night Thunder featuring the USAC Sprint Car series at O’Reilly Raceway Park. From May through October the future stars of racing will be putting their best foot under the summer lights. Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman all used USAC to further their racing career at O’Reilly Raceway Raceway.

The drag strip will see a fair share of new events including Friday Nite Rage a thrilling series of events dedicated to heads up door slammer racing. There is already a tremendous ammount of buzz regarding these events and they will be short on rules but long on excitement and thrilling racing.

The 2011 O’Reilly Raceway Park schedule will be announced soon and new for the season will be a downloadable version of the calendar in a .CSV file or iCal for Apple users. This will allow you to download the full calendar directly into your calendar and give you direct access to all the information about the season.

During the course of the year we plan on using In the Groove as a resource for our fans and will have guest bloggers, rules information, driver profiles, tail gaiting tips, recipes and much more on the page.

We hope you have a Happy Holiday season and we will be talking at you in January.

NASCAR Camping World Truck Series: The Need for Speed...Fest.

Well, it's day number 2 here at the 2009 Kroger SpeedFest at O'Reilly Raceway Park, and I must say to those who aren't joining us...BUMMER to you!! And yes, I'm totally "geeking" out. (fyi: "geeking" = freaking out in a completely geeky manner). Currently, I am sitting in the media center of O'Reilly Raceway Park's oval looking over the insane view I have. Drivers walking the pits, crew members prepping the trucks and fans overwhelmed with excitement, much like myself.

Qualifications are over, and the excitement builds as we come closing in to the main event. The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series AAA Insurance 200, presented by J.D. Byrider race starts approximately in 1 hour, 30 minutes. Right now, drivers and crew cheifs are having a meeting, trucks are lined up, people are scrambling to find seats and I am sitting cozy with a front row seat in the media center (yes, what a burden for me....)

And after all the minor drama around here, (low toner in the printer and losing the golf cart key for a brief second) I need a break!! Hahaha...this is me totally kidding. Yes, I continue to love my internship and it never falls short of surprising me with more interesting people to meet and entertaining gigs to do! SpeedFest, by far, blows ALL other events I have EVER been to right outta the water.

Continuing on my note of all the interesting people I have met... This list includes Gary, The Copy Guy; Dale & his trusty side kick, a.k.a. The Gate Keepers; John "My Brotha", Caterer Extraordinaire; and last...but certainly not least, my boss: G Fabulous, Scott Smizzle. These people had made my time here extra special, and I have learned a lot from some...and a little from most (haha...I kid, I kid!!). But, never the less my time here has been memorable and I'm glad I'm able to share these experiences with you all!

But, here's to looking forward to the future (but, not too far..) and living in the moment! Well, this blog has officially taking me to the beginning on Driver Introductions..nice! I'm out

More to come soon...I promise!

Peace,
K-Gamz

Margin of victory for NASCAR Nationwide series races

The 2009 installment of Kroger SpeedFest is rapidly approaching and as always the weekend will conclude with the running of the Kroger 200, benefitting Riley Hospital for Children. This race is always ultra competitive and the record book reflects this in the margin of victory.

Since 1993 the closest margin of victory was .147 seconds when Greg Biffle bested Jason Keller for the victory. Interestingly enough Jason Keller is involved in the largest margin of victory as well but again on the losing side of it. In 2003 Brian Vickers won the race by 2.296 seconds over Keller. Don't feel too bad for Keller though as he does have 2 career wins O'Reilly Raceway Park in 1995 and 1999.

With the competition level high as always in the Nationwide Series, it is a safe bet the margin of victory will again be close.

Tickets can be purchased by calling 1-800-884-6472.

Carl Edwards continues to run strong in the Nationwide Series

Carl Edwards outlasted the competition in Milwaukee on Saturday night to win the NASCAR Nationwide race even with flying back and forth from Infineon Raceway. In doing so Edwards sits in second place, just 127 points behind leader Kyle Busch as the Nationwide Series motors into a tough summer stretch.

In just 5 races the series returns to O’Reilly Raceway Park and Edwards returns to a track that he is not only familiar with but has won at during his career.

Edwards first came to the track a teen when he raced in the Baby Grands series. The Baby Grands were cars that looked like a smaller, more compact Sprint Cup style car and raced on the oval and portion of the infield chicane.

In the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Edwards has one win, in 2003 when he came from the fifth starting spot to get the victory.

With his success at the track it is certain Edwards will be looking to continue his strong finishes this year in the Nationwide series.

Tickets for all three nights of racing are currently on sale and can be found, here.

Kroger SpeedFest NASCAR weekend is rapidly approaching

The 2009 installment of Kroger SpeedFest is less than five weeks away and we are preparing to make this year’s event better than ever. Intern K is busily putting the race program together and we will offer sneak peaks of pages as it nears completion.

New for 2009 are exciting ticket packages that will allow fans of O’Reilly Raceway Park and Indianapolis Motor Speedway to take in action at both tracks and save money while doing so. Information on the promotion can be found, here.

In driver news, we found out this week that not only will Jason Leffer be behind the wheel of his Nationwide machine but he will also be racing in the USAC race. Leffler will be racing in the midget race and has 4 career victories at the track, with his last one coming in 2002. He does have a more recent victory at the track and that came in the Nationwide series in 2007. With that victory he gave Toyota their first win the Nationwide series.

New grandstands at O’Reilly Raceway Park

Construction projects continue at O’Reilly Raceway Park with the installation of permanent grandstands on the east, pro pit side of the drag strip. These grandstands are something the fans can use during events and hopefully they are a welcome addition.

They will be of great use for fans of the Mac Tools U. S. Nationals presented by Lucas Oil, but it will also be used for many of our other events on the dragstrip including Super Chevy Show or Goodguys Hot Rod Nationals.

Also construction of the front office is moving right along as well and there are some new pictures of it.

Another trivia time

High temperatures of mid-40’s isn’t ideal drag racing conditions so the Tuesday night street legals have cancelled for tonight. Since the street legals were going to be part of the blog today we instead do a little O’Reilly Raceway Park trivia.

The first Kroger 200, NASCAR race was at O’Reilly Raceway Park in 1982 and was the first time the sport of NASCAR has made its way into Indiana. Bob Daniels, general manager of the track at the time and his wife Eileen are credited for bringing the series to then Indianapolis Raceway Park. The winner of the first race was Morgan Shepherd in an Oldsmobile. Shepherd has three career wins at O’Reilly Raceway Park and here he is in an early publicity photo.

Here is a photo of one of the early NASCAR races at the track.

And their off….

Mother Nature cut us at O’Reilly Raceway Park a break and we were able to hold our first on track activity for 2009 on Thursday night. This was a test session for our slick tire racers and they were all excited to get to the track and start the season.

The drag crew was hard at work prior to the event making sure the racers had the best track conditions for this early in the season. These guys and ladies put in many hours of hard work and preparation to make sure these events go as smoothly as possible.





Dalton Deffenbaugh, one of our Junior dragsters, was the first car to go down the track this season with the help from his mom and dad.








The first two door cars of the year were piloted by Carl Gilbert in the left lane and Jeff Sparkman in the right.

More images can be found on our Flickr page.

We have created a YouTube video dealing with our Tuesday Night Street Legal Series. We will be making new videos on many different events as the season goes on but check out what we have done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXLRHyspaYA

Oval trivia and drag racing 101

Todays In the Groove is a little trivia about the O'Reilly Raceway Park oval and a tidbit of drag racing information.

On the .686-mile oval the one lap qualifying record for the NASCAR Nationwide series is held by David Green who went around the track in a Chevrolet, in 1994, in 21.766 seconds at 113.461 miles per hour.

In drag racing the terminal speed is maximum or top speed at the finish line.

The green flag is in hand...

Welcome to In the Groove, the official blog of O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis. For those that don't know we are one of five drag racing facilities owned and operated by the National Hot Rod Association, and was built in 1960 and has presented organized racing events since 1961.

From March through October, the facility hosts more than 120 dates of racing on three tracks, a quarter-mile drag strip, a .686-mile paved oval and a 2.5-mile road course. Home to drag racing’s biggest event, the NHRA U.S. Nationals over Labor Day weekend, the drag strip runs more than 50 days of point-to-point action, from national events to street legal community programs.

The oval track draws racing’s biggest events, including annual visits from the NASCAR Nationwide, NASCAR Camping World Series and annual USAC races. The road course provides a home for several racing sanctions, such as SCCA, while providing an ideal resource for driving schools, corporate outings and open-road tests for professional drivers.

We are set to begin the 2009 race season and uring the course of the year we will give you a behind the scenes look at the facility, the fans that attend events, the racers, the staff, fun facts about the facility and more!