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For what its worth, we went to the Indycar race last night in Fontana. I can't remember that last open-wheel race that we actually attended in person, but we were in Indianapolis last weekend and did the Dallara factory tour, came back to LA, and they were kind enough to be having an Indycar race at a time where we were free. We made the decision to attend the race the day before, bought tickets on-line, and went to the race on Saturday.
The crowd was far bigger than I would have expected. Obviously not as big as a NASCAR race and they had many seats in turn 1 & 4 roped off. We sat up high a few sections past the start finish line. There were empty seats, but it seemed like easily more than half of the seats had people in them.
There were a lot of people with team and driver shirts and hats. Again, not as much as NASCAR, but more than I was expecting. The other surprise is that so many people were yelling and cheering in the stands - the biggest cheers were for Helio early in the race as he made some amazing passes and Charlie as he led before going out. It was nice to see enthusiasm.
It was also cool to see some demonstration laps at speed with various vintage Indycars. These were done between the Indy lights race and the Indycar race.
My take? We had a great time and would go again to this race. The race was fantastic - there was a lot of very close racing and side-by-side racing that had people in the stands screaming. It was a lot of fun and was easily worth the money we paid.
Having said that, I wouldn't have traveled from another city to attend the race like we used to do in the CART days. We only attended because we had it fresh in our mind from the Dallara tour, we could make a late decision to go, it was easy to get tickets, and we could easily drive to/from the event.
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