Now it was race time with "Drivers start your engines!
The cars left Pit Row and headed out onto the track for their practice laps.
The practice laps.
The Toyota Save Mart 350 Race starts with a Green Flag.
Car 10 Danica Patrick. We ran for a while until we had a yellow flag.
The Green Flag came out after the track was cleaned and the races continued until there was an accident on Turn 7a. Once that was cleaned up, it was time for yet another Green Flag to get racing going again.
The drivers took off again with this Green Flag.
The cars coming out of the Curves 8A and 9.
Car 4 with driver Kevin Harvick.
Car 16 with driver Greg Biffle.
Racing by the Main Grandstand.
Car 10 with driver Danica Patrick. There was another accident in Turn 4A and that one took five laps to clear up.
The next Green Flag returned us to racing.
Yet another accident in Turn 4a which also tooks five laps to clear up.
Coming down into the back straight-a-way.
Back on a Green Flag, racing continued for just two laps before an accident occurred on Turn 3A. This one took four laps to clear.
Let us try this again with another Green Flag.
Racing into the back straight-a-away.
Car 17 with driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. who had a driver miscue right in front of the Main Grandstand which put the race back on a yellow flag.
The Green Flag returned us to racing.
Car 66 with driver Michael Waltrip.
Car 47 with driver A.J. Allmendinger.
Our race leader Car 99 with Carl Edwards.
Car 83 with driver Ryan Truex.
Car 2 with driver Brad Keselowski.
Our leader with ten laps to go.
Car 83 with driver Ryan Truex.
Our final leader was Car 99 with driver Carl Edwards.
Car 99 with driver Carl Edwards gets the White Flag with one lap to go.
Car 99 with driver Carl Edwards won the Toyota Save Mart 350 race today.
Danica Patrick crossed the Finish Line.
After the race we walked back to the train, letting the California Highway Patrol get us safely across the highway before I walked along it to get a picture of our train. Dave and I took the same table and Steve soon joined us. Fantastic conversations were held on the way back to Sacramento and we all agreed how much fun this train and race was, and we would do it again next year. Now if we could all get race tickets together. We said our goodbyes to Steve and the Sacramento Amtrak station then Dave and I walked back to the Vagabond Inn. I had a chicken dinner at Perko's before we returned to our room for the night, where I made three more trip pages for this story before calling it a night.
San Joaquin 702 6/23/2014We arose and I said my goodbyes to Dave before he went to Perko's for breakfast. I walked back to the station and boarded the cab car, working on this story almost all the way down the San Joaquin Valley this morning. The train lost 30 minutes on the way to Merced due to dark signals on the BNSF mainline. I finished the story before Wasco then surfed the Internet the rest of the way to Bakersfield, where I boarded the bus for LAUPT, a quick and painless trip.
We arrived into LAUPT at 2:30 PM, giving me plenty of time to catch Pacific Surfliner 580 south to Fullerton where I met Winston and Christy Walker then we waited for AC Adam to arrive on Pacific Surfliner 579. We watched some trains then went to the Train Travel Meetup Group get-together at Knowlwood's in Fullerton where I uploaded this story since I uploaded the pictures back in Sacramento this morning. After the meeting Winston drove me back to the Santa Ana station where I picked up my car before driving home, thus ending this 2014 Nascar Adventure at Sears Point.
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