Benefield: This NASCAR scene is a wacky world to behold

SONOMA - Joey Chestnut made me feel better.

Sunday marked my first-ever NASCAR race, and the medium-sized city that rises from the Sonoma Raceway for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 was a mite overwhelming at first.

I was warned in ominous tones not to get there as late at 8 a.m. for fear of never making it inside where tens of thousands of fans would be in front of me setting up camp.

But seeing the world’s greatest eater (the guy’s eaten 13 pounds of salt potatoes in 10 minutes) somehow signaled that this day would be less about laps and more about wacky. I enjoy wacky. NASCAR delivered.

“Uncle Bob” Ruiz from San Francisco was so stoked to be on the track for the first time before the race, he inked a message to local favorite Jeff Gordon on the painted infield: “#24 All Ways Race Ready Uncle Bob.”

Ruiz has been coming to Sonoma Raceway for 15 years, but Sunday marked the first time he got the coveted pass allowing him on the track and access to pre-race meetings and proximity to the drivers.

The infield area is a massive crowd of people all seemingly heading for some sight I never quite understood. And I seemed to constantly be heading in the wrong direction until I hit a barrier and was told to turn around.

And yet celebrities meandered around, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, rock climbing hero and Santa Rosa native Kevin Jorgeson, NFL bad guy Ndamukong Suh and, of course, Joey Chestnut. It was enough to keep me busy.

But the veterans, they knew what they were after. Like access to drivers after they had been announced on the stage - they walked a catwalk above the throng and got into pickup trucks. Those pickups then made a slow lap around the track giving lucky fans the chance to grab an autograph - sort of like stopping the mayor in a parade.

“For us to get inside, we’re always like the 13- or 15-year-olds, ‘Hey, let us in,’?” Ruiz said.

“It’s like being in the bosom,” Ruiz’s buddy Kevin Preston of San Francisco said. “This is my drug.”

Speaking of bosoms, Bill Walsh of Meadow Vista near Auburn, has been coming to Sonoma Raceway since well before it was Sonoma Raceway. He and his wife, Donna, spent their honeymoon in 1991 here. And every year, he wears the same hat: a red baseball hat with foam breasts covered by a polka dot bikini.

It’s a conversation starter, sort of like taking a puppy to the park.

“They try to fondle it; they want to move the bikini to see if there are nipples, which there are,” he said.

Donna Walsh turns on a bubble machine as we are talking and tells me how mellow race fans are. At any other big-time sporting events, there is “angry, mad drunkenness.”

“Even if they are drinking all day, people are rooting for 42 other teams and there is no fighting,” she said.

But there is passion.

Nathan Prather, 14, of Tracy lugged a spare tire he bought on the track Saturday around the infield, hoping for some pre-race autographs on the thing.

“You know you go to Disneyland, you get a souvenir, right?” Prather’s dad, Matt, said.

But in the fan scrum before the driver’s meeting on the infield, father and son were separated, despite having arrived at 6 a.m., Matt Prather said.

One person “pushed and shoved” and all decorum was lost.

“It got a little madhouse up there,” he said.

“I didn’t want to hold that thing on top of my head, it’s kind of big,” he said. “We were hoping to get the tire signed but how easy is it to get to Dale Jr.?”

They might want to ask Dan Reed of Santa Rosa, who picked up autographs like it was nothing, popping between the pickup trucks that carried drivers from the announcer’s podium to the pit row.

“I’m a seasoned veteran,” he said, guessing he grabbed 15 on the day.

I watched Reed weave in and out of the trucks, handing drivers his program and a Sharpie. But Reed was after the day’s big prize: Jeff Gordon.

It was local boy and fan favorite Gordon’s last time around his home track. On Sunday, everybody wanted a piece of Gordon. He got the biggest ovations as well as a series of homages throughout the day, including his own white-towel serenade from the largest Sonoma Raceway crowd in a decade. (In my book, a white towel wave signals surrender, but who was I to say anything?).

Alas, he finished 16th, in no small part because he was dinged track position after a crew member threw a piece of equipment during a pit stop.

My bet is Jessica Schneider, 11, of Novato still adores him.

“I did a whole entire report on him, two or three years ago,” she said.

Schneider schlepped her project - in the form of a shoebox locker - to races until she finally got to Gordon, who inked his name on it for her.

“Last year … we were able to slip it in front of him, pre-race,” Jessica’s dad, Todd, said.

Such is part of the craziness and lure of NASCAR - access to drivers, the ability to wander around the pit crews and quiz them on lug nuts and tire pressure if that sort of thing grabs you.

Someone likened it to hanging out in the locker room before an NFL game.

But when was the last time you saw Joey Chestnut in the pregame locker room?