Highland Rim Speedway north of Nashville is a banked 1/4 mile oval race track that has been around forever it seems. I don’t get up there all that often but they do put on a good show every weekend during the summer months.
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Inaugural Volunteer 300 – October 24, 2015
The Inaugural Volunteer 300 was held on October 24, 2015. One of my close friends recently purchasd a late-model stock car, driven by another of my friends, that was entered in the race. He asked me to go to the race with him to take some photographs of it while it was still in clean, undamaged condition as well as some in action on the track. This was something I was happy to do since I don’t need much of an excuse to head for a race track (evidenced by the fact that this is the 22nd race I’ve been to this year!). Because of that there are more photographs of the #16 car than all the rest. Ask me to come take photos of your car and there will be more of it on these pages than anything else!
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The Weather Gods were not nice to us today though. Rain was forecast for most of the day and it drizzled on us all the way to the track. Even worse, it drizzled off and on the remainder of the day causing a couple of rain delays in a race that was already running long (more about that below). The heavy, dark clouds in the photo to the left were pretty much the story for the entire day.
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We missed the practice sessions for two of the divisions but did get to see the “Baby Grands” and “Super Stocks” practice for a few laps.
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About 3:15 they began lining up the late model stock cars for the big race. This was followed by an autograph session, the invocation, and the National Anthem and raising of the American Flag, and the warm-up laps.
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And finally, about 4:30, the inaugural Volunteer 300 began. Billy Sisco, in the #16, led them up to the green flag and the race was on.
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Restarts due to caution flags were all too common throughout the entire race. At the end of the race I think there might have been one car that had very little damage, but that’s all!
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There were a couple of rain delays during the event. The first lasted about an hour before the track crews were able to get the track dry after the rain ended. The second was during one of the 2 “Competition Cautions” and only delayed the race for about 15 minutes. During the red flag period some of the crews used the time to repair some of the damage on their cars.
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And the top 5 finishers are:
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- 1st Place: Davey Coble |
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- 2nd Place: Mike Barrett |
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- 3rd Place: Dylan Fetcho |
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- 4th Place: Wade Day |
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- 5th Place: Hunter Byrd |
MY FINAL THOUGHTS:
I know there is a lot of beating and banging on short tracks, and a slick track makes that even worse. Even so, there was really no reason for some of the on-track carnage I saw tonight. At the beginning of the race 25 cars started. At the checkered flag I think there were 7 or 8 that were still on the track, and of those I don’t recall seeing one single car that wasn’t damaged. Further, some of the cars still on the track shouldn’t have been because they were junk. I think the entire leaderboard changed during the last 50 lap “Shootout” because two wrecks took out every single one of the leaders.
I would love to know what the reason was because I know for certain that every driver on that track is better than what they showed last night. There were a few that tried to drive a clean race but most of them were caught up in something not of their making. Speaking for myself I truly hope you guys do a better job next time.
I didn’t get photographs of all the cars on the track. I think a few were out of the race early, and once it got dark I stopped shooting photographs. Yes, I do have a good speedlight (flash), a couple of them in fact, but I don’t use them to take photographs of racecars at night. Drivers have enough to deal with without some jerk firing a flash in their flash, so despite what other photographers do, when it gets dark I just put my camera away and enjoy the race.
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