INDIANAPOLIS — Maybe an hour after the final checkered flag of the night, not 10 minutes after leaving the parking lot at Lucas Oil Raceway Park, I dropped the condo keys onto a stand just inside the door and hung up my jacket.
I sat on the sofa and reran the evening in my head: Tanner Swanson winning the USAC Silver Crown 100, with older brother Kody crowned series champ for a record seventh time; Tyler Roahrig topping the 500 Sprint Car Tour, and Kody Swanson grabbing that championship, too; Bobby Santos III leading the way in the National Pavement Midget Championship feature, in the process picking up the 2022 A.J. Foyt Trophy for most points earned across all open-wheel divisions at the track.
Fair crowd. Mild temperatures. Good racing.
And that was that. Another season gone.
I felt a wave of restlessness. It wasn’t some silly longing for one more race; you reach a point in life when you face the approaching winter with simple acceptance, an alien notion when you’re 19 or 25 or 32. No, it was a nagging feeling that I was supposed to be driving through the night on some interstate, or checking into an airport hotel in preparation for a morning flight back to wherever I was living.
It had been more than 45 years since I’d had a racing season end so close to home.
This life is one of springtime hellos and autumn goodbyes. We say our hellos in the sunshine. If we’re lucky enough to roam, that happens at Daytona, or at some dirt bullring in Arizona or California. For most workingman racers and fans, it has to wait until April or May, when the local track opens.
We are less choosy with our goodbyes.
There is a sense of duty in seeing things through until the end, whatever Mother Nature serves up. When I lived in New England, the last race on the calendar was either the multi-division World Series at Connecticut’s Thompson Speedway or the Thanksgiving-weekend Turkey Derby for asphalt modifieds at Wall Stadium on the Jersey shore.
I’ve been to both events when you hardly needed a sweatshirt, but those days were rare. More often, you were happy if the thermometer showed anything over 50 degrees.
I loved driving to Virginia for the Cardinal 500 at Martinsville Speedway, which in late October brought together the top NASCAR short-trackers in the East. The modifieds ran 250 laps and then the late model sportsman cars did the same. Come Sunday evening, you said your goodbyes to friends you might not see until the following March, when Martinsville drew us all back for another doubleheader.
After I moved to Indianapolis 25 years ago, I noticed something strange: I now lived in a state with dozens of race tracks, yet every fall still involved a major trip.
Chasing open-wheel heroes to California, I’ve seen the blend of Midwest and West Coast sprint car talent that is the Oval Nationals at Perris Auto Speedway, and I ate many Thanksgiving dinners on paper plates in the pits at Irwindale Speedway, filling up before the Turkey Night Grand Prix.
I boarded a lot of flights to South Florida for the NASCAR finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, which for my money was both the raciest Cup Series track and the absolute best site for the championship round.
Speaking of Florida, I’d grown up reading about, and dying to see, the Pensacola late model jamboree called the Snowball Derby. As it turned out, I saw several. Some of those Snowball weekends were frigid enough to live up to the name; others had what old-time announcers used to call “chamber of commerce weather,” warm and inviting.
If you’re looking for a wildly diverse gathering of short-track stars, it’s hard to beat the World of Outlaws World Finals each November at the Charlotte Motor Speedway dirt track. North Carolina is an unusual place to see winged sprint cars and big-block DIRT modifieds, but there they are, joined by every late model shoe worth mentioning, always playing to huge crowds. I caught that action many times, and hope to again.
So you see why it felt weird to wrap up 2022 so close to home. Forever, when the last racing engine went silent and teams began loading their rigs, I knew exactly what came next for me: a large coffee, a highway on-ramp and an all-night drive, or a last look at the next morning’s airline schedule and, hopefully, a comfortable bed in the meantime.
Now, less than five miles and four turns from Raceway Park, I was at my front door.
At least there had been a few “safe travels” handshakes to keep things feeling familiar. I pictured three proud parents smiling all the way home: Ellen and Bob Santos Jr., mom and dad to Bobby III, would be heading back to eastern Massachusetts, and Mike Swanson, once a standout driver of West Coast supermodifieds and father to Kody and Tanner, said that he’d be wheels-up at 6 a.m., flying to Fresno.
As happens every year, the tribe was scattering, riding the road or the wind. It just felt odd not to be riding with it.