Travel from Runway to Speedway in a Private Jet It's the Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing. It's also known as the Great American Race. It's the biggest event on the NASCAR calendar, and, unlike other sports who feature their biggest event at the end of the year, it's the first event on the schedule. Rent a Private Jet to the Daytona 500 Does your heart pump motor oil? Have you ever considered 93 octane to be a suitable cologne?
Do you find yourself drafting vehicles in the HOV lane during your morning commute? If you answered yes to any or all of these, then experiencing the Daytona 500 is definitely on your bucket list. The 60th running of the Daytona 500 will be held on Sunday, February 8th, 2018. The race attracts nearly 150,000 fans from across the country, and as NASCAR has grown, many fans fly in for the race from overseas. If you're looking for the ultimate NASCAR weekend, you can purchase VIP pit passes and gain access to the infield.
Along with everyone else who bought tickets as well. You're still stuck flying commercial, waiting through long security lines, baggage claims, and dealing with heavy congestion both on the ground and in the air. Are you looking for the most luxurious way to arrive for NASCAR's biggest weekend of the year? You should be looking. Private Flights to the Daytona 500 When you charter a private jet to the Daytona 500, you'll won't find a closer airport to the speedway than Daytona Beach International (FAA: DAB) - the runways are located just 2.5 miles from the track, and you'll enjoy a spectacular view of the tri-oval as your plane makes its final approach. New Smyrna Beach Municipal (EVB) and Ormond Beach Municipal (OMN) are also located nearvy for private flights heading to the Daytona 500. Flying within the Southeast?
Turboprops are excellent for private flight with lower hourly rates than light jets, and the ability to use more runways at local airports, potentially reducing your costs even more. Midsize and super midsize jets (Gulfstream G200/280, Challenger 350, LearJet 60XR) are ideal for small groups flying to the race, and long range jets (Gulfstream G4, G5, G6; Bombardier Global Express XRS; Falcon 8x) are perfect for cross country and international flights. Planning the ultimate corporate experience at a NASCAR event? Regional and VIP airliners are available to accommodate business groups of up to 180 passengers. Please be aware that due to the race creating a spike in private jet traffic,.
They're handed out on a first come, first serve basis, so make sure you stay on the lead lap and arrange your flight early to lock in your flight times. NASCAR and Private Jets Over the past decade, more and more NASCAR teams have utilized private jets to travel between their facilities, non-racing events, and from track to track, befitting from the comfort, convenience, and time savings private planes provide. Whether they're on the track or in the sky, NASCAR drivers prefer going fast. Drivers and teams prefer traveling the same way. They don't want to go a lap down waiting in long security and luggage lines at commercial airports. Nor do they want a caution to come out and push back their departure time.
Or worse, risk a blag flag waiving and canceling their flight altogether. In fact, since it’s runway expansion in the early 2000’s, several NASCAR racing teams started basing their private planes just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina at Concord Regional (JQF),. These teams prefer Concord Regional over Charlotte Douglas due to its affordability and proximity to their headquarters.
If you already have a Modells.com account, you can connect it via your Facebook, Google, Yahoo or Amazon account.
Convenient access to Charlotte Motor Speedway and the Z-max Dragway via I-85 doesn't hurt, either. And, with the Daytona 500 held in early February while North Carolina experiences cold weather, Charlotte Motor Speedway sometimes sends jet dryers used for the race track to Concord Regional to help dry the runways so race teams can depart for Daytona. Event Information NASCAR Daytona 500 Sunday, February 18, 2018 Daytona Beach, FL.
. Tell us some more. Upload in Progress. Upload failed. Please upload a file larger than 100x100 pixels. We are experiencing some problems, please try again. You can only upload files of type PNG, JPG, or JPEG.
You can only upload files of type 3GP, 3GPP, MP4, MOV, AVI, MPG, MPEG, or RM. You can only upload photos smaller than 5 MB. You can only upload videos smaller than 600MB. You can only upload a photo (png, jpg, jpeg) or a video (3gp, 3gpp, mp4, mov, avi, mpg, mpeg, rm). You can only upload a photo or a video. Video should be smaller than 600mb/5 minutes. Photo should be smaller than 5mb.
By LINDA [email protected] DAYTONA BEACH One by one, about 40 men dressed in matching black jackets hopped off a private jet Thursday afternoon and headed straight toward the waiting shuttles, ready to transfer them to Daytona International Speedway. The members of NASCAR team Richard Childress Racing had no time to waste. Once that night’s Budweiser Dual qualifying race was over, many of them would be back on that plane to Concord, North Carolina. “To be with our families,” said Brian Bottlemy, a rear tire changer for RCR. “Then we’re coming back Saturday morning and stay overnight for the (Daytona) 500 on Sunday.” RCR was one of several NASCAR teams, fans and sponsors flying in and out of a private terminal at Daytona Beach International Airport. Sheltair Aviation, which leases around 20 acres from the airport, typically sees 800 aircraft movements during Speedweeks — the busiest time of the year.
“This is our Super Bowl in a way,” said Arvin Weese, general manager for Sheltair Daytona. “We probably get as many aircrafts in just a few days than we do in an entire month.” And it’s not just NASCAR teams who are traveling in style. Weese said politicians and celebrities attending the race will also use his terminal, in which he’ll roll out a red carpet and have bodyguards escort them. “We’re here to support them,” he said. Weese expects to receive 150 aircrafts this year during Speedweeks, up from 120 planes last year when bad weather hindered traffic. But it won’t be until 2016, the year the Speedway’s $400 million renovation is completed, when Weese hopes to get 200 aircrafts.
“We’re looking at next year to be the best year we’ve had in a while,” he said. The Daytona Rising makeover consists of revamping the track’s frontstretch grandstands to include wider, more comfortable seats and other amenities. Sheltair is one of three fixed-base operators at the airport that offer aeronautical services such as fueling, parking and maintenance. Steve Cooke, the airport’s director of business development, said he expects to park 200 to 300 planes on property this year, costing about $1,000 a day. However, it’s a weak number compared to 2007. “There is an uptick during race week but not so much in the last few years,” he said, noting that 2007 saw 400 aircrafts.
Lerajet 60 Photo
“We had the recession in 2008 and the attendance was not as strong.” Still, air traffic during Speedweeks contributes significantly in terms of revenue to the airport, Cooke said, and so far it’s been a good year. “We had more planes during the Rolex (24 at Daytona) than I’ve seen before,” he said. “The price of jet fuel has gone down pretty dramatically. People tend to drive to the races but we have seen more and more people travel by aircraft.” Weese said the bulk of traffic happens on the day of the Daytona 500, with back-to-back landings every few minutes. It’ll slow down once the race starts, at 1p.m. Sunday, and then pick up right after it ends.
“When everyone wants to leave, they tend to do it at the same time,” Weese said, so he’ll bring in 15 extra employees for support. “They all come in and help us handle the large amount of aircrafts.” A 2013 study, the latest available, found that Speedweeks has an average base economic impact on Volusia County of about $90 million. Daytona Beach-based Mid-Florida Marketing & Research, which conducted the study, expects attendance for Speedweeks to continue increasing over the next several years.
And that’s what Joie Chitwood III is hoping for. The Speedway President said fans this year will likely rush to watch retiring Jeff Gordon, four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion, compete in his final Daytona 500 while others will want to check out the revamped portion of the track’s grandstands. “We created a lot of attention for the new seats last year,” he said. “I feel really good about our prospects.”.
It’s a well known fact that nearly all Sprint Cup drivers use private planes to travel between races, and it’s something that tends to catch the attention of fans and the media from time to time, usually in a negative way. I understand why. Years ago, if someone had told me they were flying places in a private plane, that would have sounded like an extreme luxury. And to an extent — namely, when it comes to missing all the headaches of a commercial airport like security and airline issues — it is. But using private air travel is really something of a necessity in our sport. A lot of people don’t understand that, so I’d like to kind of talk about why we travel the way we do, and some of the history behind it. MISSING THE RACE My grandfather was one of the early participants when NASCAR first started, and back then, they raced 70 to 100 times a year.
Until the 1970s, that was the norm, and then the modern schedule came out, which cut the number of races down to the 30s. That change was made for a number of reasons, but perhaps the biggest one was that logistically, it was impossible to make all the races back then. With 70-some odd races across the entire United States, there were only a handful of teams had the money to travel back and forth.
And sometimes, even they would break down on the way to the racetrack, and actually miss the race because they couldn’t get there. Think of that if you’re a fan. You head to Arkansas to watch a race, and the guy you wanted to see — who was driving from Washington — broke down halfway. You bought a ticket, and he’s not there. That was kind of a tough situation to be in, and it happened a fair amount of the time. That’s part of the reason that we evolved to have two and three day practice schedules at most tracks. If you had an issue when you were traveling, you might still make it in time for the race.
But as the sport developed and went into the modern area, with less races on the schedule and perhaps more of a focused approach, it freed up time for the teams to be able to travel. In that sense, there was never a reason to not be there for the race, or there should have been plenty of time to get there. Well, as we got into the era of the sport relying so heavily on corporate funding, there were suddenly new obligations for drivers.
It wasn’t just about making it to races. It was about making it to four different appearances before each race, with all four appearances in different states. Just recently, I actually had to fly to six different states in six days, all for commitments that required me to be perfectly on time, without the slightest hiccup in the schedule.
Imagine if I missed one of those appearances. There would be a lot of very disappointed people, much like those people who would have been disappointed in the 50s and 60s when their favorite race car driver didn’t show up at the race. Missing an event is really not an option, and commercial travel just isn’t reliable enough to actually keep that kind of schedule. A CAR IN THE SKY When it comes to using private planes, the truth is that we use an airplane like most people would use a car.
Every once and a while, we take vacations with it, but mostly we use it to drive back and forth to work. I can really appreciate how much easier our plane makes things because of my background. When I was growing up, my dad raced all over the country. We would travel to a racetrack — from Michigan to Daytona, let’s say, which is a 24-hour drive — and we would just do it. I would ride in the car or the hauler or whatever, and sleep, or play video games, whatever you do as a kid.
We would get to Daytona, spend three days there, and drive back. It would take us a day and a half to get there, and a day and a half to get back. By the time the week was over, we’d have spent nearly three days of cumulative time traveling.
Compare that to the first flight I ever took. It was with Dale Jr., and I was just a Nationwide driver at the time. He had a very busy schedule and we both had an appearance in Florida for the Navy, who sponsored both of our cars, so he asked if I wanted to fly with him. I figured why not. The moment I stepped on the plane, I was a little nervous about it.
The first thing I noticed was that the plane was really, really small. There was a lot less headroom than I was used to. I’m also not the best flier in the world, and I really don’t like not being in control. (Neither do most drivers, which is why a bunch of them fly their own planes.) But by the time we got to Florida, which didn’t take long, I’d kind of forgotten about all that.
I’m still not the best flier in the world, and I’m very aware of NASCAR’s history when it comes to aviation accidents. In 1993, there were two devastating small plane crashes. One was with Alan Kulwicki, who was the 1992 champion. He was flying from an appearance to the racetrack for the race weekend. His plane flew through some ice and the pilot failed to use the de-icer, and it went down.
That same year, Davey Allison — who was kind of the next big thing before Jeff Gordon — died in a helicopter crash. Safety is something that I think about a lot, and something that we pay a lot of attention to. We don’t take anything for granted. We had a situation a few weeks ago where the landing gear on the plane wasn’t working right. We couldn’t take off. I had to steal a ride to Detroit on someone else’s plane to make an appearance that I couldn’t be late for. OUR CREW Joey Meier, the spotter for the No.
2 team, is great at his job. But one of the other reasons I hired him was because he is a pilot, too. He flies my plane. That makes for some interesting post-race conversations. Once we get to altitude and level out, we probably have a good 30 to 40 minutes to talk, and kind of air out any thoughts or issues that might have come up during the race. Needless to say, we try not to get too heated during those conversations.
Michael Ribas, who does PR for the team, is usually with me, and Paige and our baby daughter, Scarlett, too. I usually bring one or two other people — maybe a couple people from the team, or other drivers who are catching a ride.
Nascar Drivers 2018 List
I recently partnered with Gogo to put WiFi on my plane, so my next tweet might come from a mile high (©NKP, Matthew T. Thacker) As far as the flights go, we spend our time doing the same stuff everybody does on an airplane: reading, playing video games, watching a movie. Not long ago, I partnered up with Gogo to put WiFi on my plane, so I’ve started fooling around with Twitter from the plane as well. BEING THERE It’s kind of hard to overstate how much time we save by using our own planes.
In a racing season, our haulers cover around 150,000 miles on the ground going from track to track. Add in all of my appearances, and we’re easily doing way more than that in the air.
How Many Nascar Drivers Have Private Jets
NASCAR tracks are always in very rural areas, so we typically fly out of small airports — otherwise, you’d be a two-hour drive from the closest major airport. Add in the time it takes to check in and so forth for a commercial flight, and we’re probably saving four or five hours every trip we take. When you consider that we take about 125 flights a year, that’s a minimum of 500 hours of time we’re saving. The bottom line is that NASCAR drivers try to be very accessible. Private air travel allows me to do that. It lets me be at the racetrack on time so that I can be there for the media.
It helps me to get to more of our sponsor events, which is good for our team and for the sport. And ultimately, it lets me be at more appearances for our fans.
Sure, it’s a win for the drivers, but everyone else is winning, too. Hi Brad, yes I’ve had this email for years lol.
I was a huge Rusty fan. The 12 was Jeremy Mayfield at the time. Rusty fan since 91 and now yours. Thank you for that article, it does explain more on not just being lavish. But highlights more on air travel necessity. I was just at Watkins Glen race, sat in between turn 1 & 2.
Great race, that tire off of Bowman’s car was right in front of me lol never have seen that before. Team Penske is looking good. Good luck, get some wins and focus in the chase.
Brad it was odd that you mentioned Alan and Davey. I was a huge fan of racing I was Bill Elliott Davey and Alan fan.
When they both passed that year I pretty much quit following NASCAR until you came along. Always followed Penske in Indy car loved the way he ran his business I always wanted to work for him. Top notch operation I am a number one Brad fan now. I respect the way you are. Followed you in nationwide.
Was in front of TV for every race when you won championship have watched you race at Ky ever chance I can. You got where you are by earning it. Just be safe up there and out there You win it all this year I know you can.
Hi Brad, Great post! Since NASCAR is such a fan oriented and followed sport, maybe the team’s could capitalize on it by offering random drawings for their fans, where a small number of fans (2 – 5) would be picked in random drawings to fly to and from their nearest, regional airport to the race. New drawing every week. Wouldn’t cost the team an excess amount, would give their fans the ultimate “meet and greet” experience, etc. The fan(s) would still be responsible for their own race tickets and accommodations at the venue, but would leave them a few extra bucks to spend at the track.
Of course, all liability waivers to be signed as a condition of accepting the prize. Just a suggestion. Great story, Brad, really enjoyed your perspective.
I was chief pilot for Aerodynamics in GA last year when we flew the BK Racing teams, 23, 26 and 83, spent time at Concord Airport seeing the flying aspect of racing first-hand. Hope to be flying Garrett Smithley when he moves on up to Sprint Cup. Thanks to Brian and your dad for giving him his first shot in ARCA testing at Daytona a couple years back. Always pulling for you on Sunday!
(Or Saturday night) hope to see you one of these days. Was really cool for Garrett to compete with you at Pocono!
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |