Revved up in Kentucky

Kyle Busch celebrates the inaugural win of the Quaker State 400 Sprint Cup race at Kentucky Speedway, Saturday, July 9, 2011.

This Saturday I headed up to Sparta to cover the Inaugural running of the Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway. My arrival at 9:30 a.m., was greeted by no traffic. This would not be the case for many of my friends who were behind me.

A group of ladies from Kentucky wait outside the garage area waiting for their favorite driver.

After finding my bearings around the property I spent some time looking for features but the heat was pretty brutal.

My assignment for the race was to shoot the start then shoot an overall and get it to the photo editor ASAP. After that I was on my own until after the race. Earlier in the day I proposed a remote shot the editor agreed would make a good photo, so with 40 laps left I went to the winner's circle and waited for the winner to appear.

This was my first experience with NASCAR and it was much better than I had imagined.

In August 2010 NASCAR announced that Kentucky Speedway could hold a Sprint Cup Series event in 2011. Seven months later Royal Dutch Shell's Quaker State brand was announced as sponsor, and the 267 lap race held on 9 July was won by Kyle Busch.

For this event I was working for the Associated Press. It wasn't my first assignment for them but it was definitely the most involved thing I've done for them.

Usually when I am on assignent people ask "Where are these photos going to be?" and most of the time I can say exactly where you will see them.

What's different with the AP is that the photos could end up anywhere. After a quick google search of my name and the name of the race it returned a couple of pages that had my photos that were submitted to various news organizations.