If you are looking for a great place to spend a weekend (or a whole week for that matter!) try Talladega Motor Speedway! They are, I think, a good value for the money. As of 1999, they provide a lot of entertainment for your racing dollar.

First off, because the speedway has 900 acres of grandstand parking, all parking at the speedway is FREE (infield notwithstanding, of course). If you choose to park farther from the speedway to make entering and exiting the property quicker and easier (more on that later), there are people who will let you park on their land for a fee. Last time I saw it was around $10. They also have a huge area available for camping at the track. It is primitive camping, nothing but port-a-potties and garbage cans, but hey, it’s FREE! The campgrounds start filling up earlier every race, but people are still arriving on Saturday night, so get there when you can.

About the closest hotels are in Birmingham, 45 minutes to an hour away on other weekends, and they fill up early. I once had to reschedule the christening of a child because there were no rooms in town for out of town guests! That was before I started going to the races, now I know better! If you stay in Birmingham, plan on getting up VERY early! The only main road near the track is I-20 from Birmingham to Atlanta. I wouldn’t leave Bham any later that 6:00 on raceday. We live in Birmingham, and we still camp out to stay out of the traffic. If you are going to be driving on Sunday, you would do well to get a handbook & traffic guide from the track (call 256-362-7223) or get a program if you are there on Friday or Saturday. They have some of the smaller roads blocked for race traffic on Sundays, and you want to make sure you don’t end up going somewhere besides your destination, especially if you are unfamiliar with the area!

On to the track itself and the race---On Fridays, admission is around $10 dollars, kids under 12 free. On Saturdays, general admission in the grandstands is $35, tower seats are $45. On Sunday, tickets range from $55 to $175. If you want to see every inch of the track, you will need to spring for tower seats, but we have always managed to have a great time sitting in the grandstands, and they added the giant TVs last year, which made it even better. Everything happens so fast there, that it is good to be able to see the replays! If you sit near the top of the grandstands you can usually see all of the frontstretch, from turn 3 around to turn 2, but be sure to bring binoculars! It’s a long way around that track; the frontstretch is 4300 feet. One minus to this track is that they only have the top 5 on the leaderboard, but hopefully they will get a new one soon! We have been to all of the spring races since ’92, and all of the October races since they changed from July, and while there have been some fairly uneventful races, most have been quite exciting, with plenty of lead changes, and lots of close racing.

Finally for some basic track facts

Coolers up to 14" are allowed, so you can take your own drinks, and you can bring in anything else you can carry, but remember you sit with what you bring!

They have painted half the seats black, so if you call for tickets, you might want to see if they can tell you what color your seats will be. I imagine the black ones get hot in the sunshine, so you would probably want to bring a towel to sit on.

Talladega has a pretty good number of concession stands, so if you don’t want to carry anything in, you probably won’t miss too much of the race standing in lines. Prices are in line with other tracks.

There are plenty of restrooms (much cleaner on Saturdays, than on Sundays, of course!), so unless you visit at the start of a caution or immediately after the race there usually isn’t a line.

Aside from the souvenir trailers outside of the track, there are lots of merchandise booths in the grandstand area, and the people running them are very nice.

The personnel at the track are always very helpful and polite.

Be sure to wear comfortable walking shoes, because no matter what you do, you will be walking a lot. Talladega is a huge facility! Of course, if you have a disability, call for info on special parking, etc.

One last note---if you decide to camp out at the track, and I think everyone should at least once, please clean up after yourself, so they won’t have to start charging for camping! Nascar has the best fans in the world, and it’s great to be able to spend a weekend among them for free!

Review by Maggie