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The upper section begins at Devil’s Playground, which is easily the most popular vantage point on the mountain. There is a large parking area for vehicles and a gently sloping hill for you to sit and watch. If you find yourself wanting to get away from the crowds and explore, there is a footpath that you can follow up towards the finish line.
Bottomless Pit corner is a nice area to watch, drivers will come at a very fast pace into this medium right hander and the early morning sun spills in through a viewing area between a couple of crests. That early morning sun can feel pretty darn good when you’ve been standing on a windswept dimly lit god forsaken frozen rock since 2AM. But you won’t catch me complaining.
Every year they hold a Fan Fest in downtown Colorado Springs. Here you can find mouth breathers squishing their faces up against the racecars without catching an evil eye from the crew. Fortunately most of the racers love a chance to talk to the fans, so don’t be afraid to stop and chat for a bit! Downtown you will find plenty of great restaurants, a beer garden, a motocross exhibition by Redbull, a beer garden, tons of free swag from sponsors, and a beer garden! Definitely make it a point to visit the beer garden.
Some teams will even haul their race rig down for the show, like Jean Phillipe-Dayraut and his massive lunar explorer, err, I mean UNICAT truck. This thing was absolutely flippin’ crazy to see up close, especially as they were trying to parallel park it downtown with a team of 5 spotters! Overkill? Maybe. Badass? Yup, definitely.
Coming back to that whole “sleep is a distant memory” thing, you may as well not even go to sleep before the big race on Sunday. A line usually starts to form at the tollgate before midnight on Saturday, and they don’t open the gate until 3AM. If you’re lucky you can be up on the mountain by 5 or 6AM, with traffic you tend to have a pretty slow uphill pace. Tons of people choose to camp out on the mountain overnight as well, so you may find yourself struggling to find a good spot to watch the race if you show up late.
