Sometimes the Full Moon Wins
Friday night at I-96 Speedway started the same way a lot of race nights do for me.
I rolled through the gate a few hours before the first car ever hit the track, found my parking spot at my trailer, grabbed my gear, and started making the rounds through the pits. The Great Lakes Super Sprints were in town, which always means there's a little extra energy around the facility. The series consistently brings some of the best sprint car racing you'll find anywhere in the Midwest, and whenever they show up, you know you're probably going to leave with a few thousand photos on your memory cards.
One of the best parts of getting to the track early is having time to catch up with people before the night gets busy. I spent some time talking with friends from the Great Lakes Super Sprints crew before wandering through the pit area. Drivers were unloading, crews were making final adjustments, families were settling in for the night, and track staff were getting everything ready for another Friday night of racing.
While all of that is happening, I'm usually thinking about a dozen different things at once.
Part of my job is creating content for the speedway. Part of it is making sure I'm getting what I need for my own social media and portfolio. Sometimes I have drivers or teams who hired me directly. Sometimes I'm thinking about stories I'm writing, future projects, or ideas I want to try with a camera. Before hot laps even begin, I'm usually working through a mental checklist while creating arrival content for Facebook and TikTok.
Tonight’s mission was to start building a library of images showing off the sponsors around the track. From the concessions, to the hot pit board, victory lane, stands, and more we’ve got so much support at I-96 Speedway. It’s a part of my job to get these signs in action, showing the sponsor that they’re brand supports us (and they’re getting their money’s worth). Being a motorsport track photographer isn’t always images of fast cars and rowdy fans.
At the same time, I'm always looking for scenes that most fans never get to see.
The race car getting rolled out of the trailer.
Wings being installed on sprint cars
The driver sitting quietly before qualifying.
The kid helping wash the car.
The smoke circles catching up and cracking jokes
Those moments tell as much of the story as anything that happens under the green flag.
One thing I had decided before I even left home was that I wanted to try something different for sprint car qualifying. Instead of shooting from my usual positions around the track, like the outside of turn 1, I climbed up onto the flagstand and tried to capture the cars from directly above. In my head, I had this vision of them ripping around the cushion and coming right underneath me. The reality didn't quite cooperate. Most of the drivers ran lower than I expected, so the images weren't exactly what I had imagined. That's photography sometimes. The good news is I still ended up with some unique angles that you don't often see from a dirt track. Standing up there also gives you a new appreciation for just how fast these cars are. The quickest qualifier stopped the clock at 14.561 seconds, which works out to nearly 99 mph around a four-tenths-mile dirt oval. When you're looking straight down at a sprint car carrying that kind of speed into the corner, it's hard not to be impressed.
Opening ceremonies arrived, and for a few minutes, I was doing double duty.
I was photographing the veteran recognition and pre-race ceremonies while also handling Facebook Live coverage for the speedway. Thankfully, years of working events have taught me how to juggle multiple things at once, because there are moments at a racetrack where everything seems to happen simultaneously.
Once the racing started, the show moved along pretty smoothly. The Great Lakes Super Sprints led off the evening, followed by the Modifieds, Street Stocks, and Compacts. There was plenty of good racing throughout the night, and for a while, it looked like we were headed toward a fairly routine Friday night program.
Then, the full moon took control and made things interesting. A few cautions eventually led to a red flag situation on the track. While officials were dealing with that incident, a fan in the grandstands required medical attention and EMS was called to assist. As first responders worked with the fan, another incident developed in the pit area that required law enforcement attention. For a little while, it felt like everyone at the speedway was dealing with three different situations at once.
The delay stretched to roughly 45 minutes before everything was sorted out and racing resumed. By that point, the nearly full moon hanging over the speedway had become the running joke of the night. If you've spent enough time around racing, you know that sometimes there are evenings where weird things just seem to happen one after another. Friday felt like one of those nights.
Thankfully, once the green flag returned, the rest of the program wrapped up without any major issues.
The Great Lakes Super Sprints feature provided one of the best stories of the evening as a driver returned to victory lane after spending nearly two years away from the golden lane. Wins have a way of meaning a little more when you've had to wait for them. The Modifieds, Street Stocks, and Compacts all saw familiar faces find victory lane as well, including repeat winners from recent weeks.
And for the second straight week, victory lane featured a backflip off a race car. I don't know if that's becoming a trend at I-96 Speedway, but I have a feeling photographers aren't going to complain if it does.
By the time the final checkered flag flew, it was much later than anybody had originally planned. The racing was done, but my night wasn't even close to over. I made the mistake of taking way too many photos. Again. Every week I tell myself I'm going to be more selective. Every week, I ignore my own advice.
The result was a long editing session once I got home, sorting through thousands of images from throughout the night. The silver lining is that I spent some of that editing time experimenting with a few new Photoshop techniques and creative ideas I've been wanting to try. I've got a couple of projects in the works that are a little different from my normal racing coverage, and I'm excited to share them soon. The first solution is thinking like I’m using film. The second is turning off the super-crazy burst mode I use for panning and action shots.
If you'd like to be among the first people to see those projects, future race coverage, behind-the-scenes stories, and a few things I probably haven't thought of yet, make sure you're subscribed to my newsletter.
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Because, as Friday night proved once again, the stories around the racetrack are often every bit as interesting as the racing itself.
