The AMBER Alert Portal 300 Sunday, August 14, 2005 I received 2 sets of free Kentucky IRL ticket vouchers in the mail from Marlboro, good for 4 tickets. That was enough encouragement to attend. Dave, Russ and Brian. Brian drove us in his van. We left Indy at 9:30 and got parked about noon. The race didn't start until 2:30 Indy time (3:30 local time). We hiked up around the outside of the track looking for the place to redeem our ticket vouchers. Marlboro Penske would only honor one set, so we needed to get two more tickets. Russ found someone up around a ticket stand who gave him two free "comp" tickets! We then found a scalper who traded us our tickets plus $40 for 4 seats together in Stand 2, Section N, row 20. So we each only spent $10. Besides bringing some Harp beer today, I also picked up some Grolsch Amber Ale to try. Like Harp, it is a great beer! Big Dave just drank water all day and so he would be our driver on the way home. Kentucky Speedway does not allow coolers, so we tailgated out at the car. I did sneak a flask into the track so I had a couple cocktails during the race. The line to get in was very long and slow. It was a hot muggy day, but there was some good cloud cover and breezes. This chick's tatooes included spiders, beetles and bloodsucking zombies. The Valvoline Chopper Here kids can practice performing a pit stop. Qualifying was rained out yesterday, so the starting lineup was according to practice speeds. Danica was on the pole! Dario Franchitti came out of the pits, lost a wheel and slid up onto the track. He limped back around to the pits. I needed a pack of smokes and went in search. Even with all the Penske Marlboro tents everywhere, no one had any smokes for sale except one snack stand at the total opposite end of the place. Dan Wheldon had a good day, but his Andretti-Green teammates did not. Wheldon finished 3rd. There was a record setting number of people in attendance today - 62,595. Ed Carpenter had trouble with the Vision car and limped behind. When the pack was passing him, he had mechanical problems and hit the wall. There was lots of close side by side racing today. This was a tremendous race to see! Even though we were only halfway up the stands, we could see all the way around the track. Coming into the pits... Toward the end of the race, Vitor Meira was right on Scott Sharp's bumper. Lap after lap Meria ran side by side with Sharp, but couldn't pass him on the outside and Sharp protected the inside line to the end of the race. Sharp's margin of victory was the 2nd closest in the speedway's history. A.J. Foyt IV and Jimmy Kite had a good day, finishing in the top 10. The series also set the record for lead changes with "The AMBER Alert Portal Indy 300" as the lead changed 16 times among Andretti Green driver Tony Kanaan, Meira, Sharp and Wheldon. I was happy to see Scott Sharp win. He'd one an IRL race every year since the series inception until last year. It was also good to see a different team in each of the front runners. While there were many people directing traffic into the speedway, there were none but a few officers directing traffic out. There was only one way out of our parking area, and we all sat there an hour before they let us out. There was only one restroom outside the track. This place needed a lot more. Back to Photo Index.