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Beefing Up for Bubba; How Talladega controls the over-beveraged.(Motorsports)(Winston Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway)
Byline: WILLIAM JEANES
At the spring Winston Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway, Maj. Randy Cook of the Harrison County, Mississippi, Sheriff's Department noticed a number of new Pontiac police cars, more than he expected to see in a small county. The driver of one of the cars told Cook that he and his car were part of a temporary mobilization of police and security personnel. And no wonder. If you faced the crowd situation that Talladega does, you'd holler for help too.
On a normal weekend, Alabama's Talladega County, just east of Birmingham, is quiet. With a population of about 80,000, the county exceeds 50 of Alabama's 67 counties in number. Its county seat, the town of Talladega, lies some 10 miles south of the speedway and is home to 16,000 people.
Twice a year, as Dr. Jekyll might put it, things change.
On a NASCAR weekend, Talladega Superspeedway becomes the third- or fourth-largest city in the state, moving past Huntsville, at 165,000, and nudging Montgomery, the state capital. To put that in perspective, imagine 20,000 people showing up for your Labor Day cookout. Imagine that they brought enough beer with them to fill every bathtub in town. That is what happens at Talladega Superspeedway.
Track president Grant Lynch told AutoWeek, "We have to have everything in place that a city would need in order to take care of all those people,'' which is to say somewhere between 150,000 and 160,000 racing fans. That means establishing security, medical, fire and safety infrastructures- to say nothing of providing concession stand personnel, gatekeepers, traffic controllers, restroom attendants and acupuncturists. Well, maybe not acupuncturists. All told, the staff swells from a workaday 50 or so to more than 3000.
Lynch explained why Talladega Superspeedway's needs outstrip those of most tracks. "We have 2300 acres here, and we use 1500 of them. A huge portion of that is for camping. At a track like Kansas, for example, that doesn't have the acreage we do, you can count on most people heading for hotels at 5 or 6 o'clock because they don't have the camping facilities we do. Thousands of our fans are with us for 48 to 54 hours straight.''
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