Saturday, July 09, 2005

Practice Run


One of the offical blue vested photographers sits next to a photo window with Mario Dominguez flying by for Team Forsythe Championship Racing

Before being allowed to stand next to the track, a super photo pass holder has to attend a safety meeting to go over a few rules.
1. You cannot wear red or yellow clothing.
- these are the colors of the warning flags that get stuck out of holes similar to the photo holes to warn drivers that there might be an accident on the track.

2. You cannot lean on the fence or kneel on both legs while shooting.
- this is just in case the car gets out of control and decides to head right for you. Kneeling on one knee you can get up out of the way faster.

3. You cannot use the concrete block holding up the fence as a shelf for stuff.
- if a car does hit the concrete block it's going pretty fast. The collision could destroy your gear and/or turn them into flying debris.

4. You must wear long pants
- I didn't get this rule. I just figured it had something to do with flying debris.

5. You must give priority to offical media to use the photo hole.
- obviously the media guy gets paid to take the "good" shots. Sometimes that's all the money they might make as some newpapers only really pay by the photo taken.

After the safety meeting one of the guys told us how one of the cars, during the practice run, ran right into the concrete block he was standing in front of. The block was moved 6 inches towards him.

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