Sunday at Infineon

We had no events this weekend as it was time for a long-needed rest and a Sunday at Infineon. We left Hayward around 8:30 and headed up Highway 880 to 80, exiting at Tennessee Ave. in Vallejo. We have found that you encounter much less traffic cutting through Mare Island instead of exiting farther north onto Highway 37. By doing this, you can jump ahead of a lot of the traffic heading over to Infineon.

When we were half-ways down Tennessee, I looked over at my boy and asked him the magic question...'do you have the tickets?' He said "no, I thought you had them." Oh gosh, so we had to turn around and head back home 35 miles to pick them up. Finally, after getting back on the road, we arrived at the race track around noontime. Actually, we ended up with a better parking spot than we would have if we would have arrived earlier A bit less walking and less sitting around waiting for the race to begin.

Our seats were located at Turn 7, on the northmost part of the track. Had to walk up about 30 rows to our seat, but it was a good location where you could see about 2/3 of the track and it was just a short walk to the toilets and food.

The race began around 3:00 and ended just before 5:00. Helio Castroneves was the winner. Danica Patrick came in 5th. It was a very clean race and there was just a couple yellow flags popping up, but just for a few seconds as cars spun out and were able to turn back around. You usually see a lot of fender bender, side swiping action from Turn 7.

After the race was over, I was surprised to be forced to go out the 'back way' which zig-zagged through the hills and ended up farther west on Highway 37. I guess that they had closed down a portion of that highway, west of Infineon because the closed both lanes due to an accident. However, when we made it to the junction, traffic was crawling along in the east direction. So, we decided that it might be quicker to go west to Highway 101 and take the San Rafael bridge. However, it turned out to be very slow, as we encountered 10 miles of 'Sunday' traffic. Can't win.