Friday was the longest day of my vacation.  We were at the track for 12 hours or so.  Friday included two Nationwide series practices, a Sprint Cup practice, qualifying for both the Nationwide & Sprint Cup series, and finally the Craftsman Truck series race.  Plus, SPEED TV was filming Trackside Live and we watched that for a while.

The photo above is of the tunnel we walked through many times over the course of the weekend to get to the track infield from the grandstand and back.  It is really weird walking through that when cars are driving at full speed overhead.

Jeff Gordon won the pole for the Sprint Cup series race.  The above photos is of his crew pushing the pole winning car into Victory Lane for the Coors Pole Award ceremony.

I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of Junior’s winning banner.  I pass it each time I’m at the track and have, thus far, resisted.

Brad Keselowski qualified on time for his first Sprint Cup race.  He was driving the Hendrick Motorsports 25 GoDaddy.com Chevy.  I’m glad that I was there to witness his first Cup race (more on his finish on Day 6).

Driver introductions for the Craftsman Truck race were a bit unorthodox at Texas Motor Speedway.  Instead of coming out onto a stage to wave to the crowd, the drivers actually came down out of the crowd and onto the track.  As you can see in this picture, track workers led 3 drivers at a time down the stands and then out onto the track into their respective Chevy truck for their ride-around.

Click here to see all of the photos I took on Friday.