Life in the fast lane

Ron Firth
COLUMBIANA — After spending a weekend being part of NASCAR’s traveling road show, Dan Lowry of Columbiana needed to slow down.

Lowry took the day off Monday after enjoying the Dan Lowry 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in Virginia.

“I needed a recovery day,” said Lowry, a 1996 graduate of Crestview High School. “After the race, I was pretty well exhausted. They kept me on the move all the time (he was at the track from 7:30 a.m. Saturday to 3 a.m. Sunday).”

Lowry was the grand prize winner in Crown Royal’s “Your Name Here 400” contest and he was a celebrity for the weekend.

“When we went past people, they said, ‘Is that him?’” Lowry said. “I signed a lot of autographs, which was really weird. You were just riding around and people said, ‘Can we have your autograph?’ I’m not anyone famous. I just won a contest.”

He got to sit in on the drivers’ prerace meeting, give the famous race command, ‘Gentlemen, start your engines,’ ride in the pace car and present the trophy to race winner Clint Bowyer on Saturday night.

“There were a number of drivers who said congratulations,” Lowry said. “Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon, in particular, went out of their way.”

He shook hands with all 43 drivers as they were introduced.

“On the driver introduction stage, you can tell who are the favorites,” Lowry said. “When Kyle Busch was called, everybody booed. Jeff Gordon got booed, too. Put yourself in their shoes. If you walked out in front of 100,000 people and they booed, how would you feel?”

The best part of his weekend came right before the race.

“Saying, ‘Gentlemen, start your engines” and hearing 112,000 people erupt was great,” Lowry said. “Everybody said go over the top and I did. The people at the track said it was one of the best ones they ever had.”

Lowry didn’t get a chance to wave the green flag because he was riding in the pace car.

When the race started, Lowry and his wife, Amy, were in one pace car and his parents, Dan and Becky Lowry of New Waterford, were in the other pace car.

“It was neat with 100,000 people screaming and yelling your name,” he said.

He also got to meet the FOX TV broadcasters and visited the FOX trailer.

“They have like 75 screens on the back of this trailer,” Lowry said. “(The director) looked like a master of a symphony.”

Lowry was in Victory Lane waiting for the race to end when leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kyle Busch got together, causing crowd favorite Earnhardt to wreck.

“You just heard the crowd go, ‘Ahhhh,’” Lowry said. “Then you find out its Kyle Busch. After what happened Friday, I said I hope Busch doesn’t win because I’ll probably get lynched.”

Clint Bowyer passed Busch during the wreck on the way to his second career Cup victory. Lowry handed the Dan Lowry 400 trophy to Bowyer with car owner Richard Childress looking on.

“It was unbelievable. It really was,” Lowry said of the weekend. “It was the greatest experience for myself to date. Nothing bad could have happened because of how nice the people from Crown Royal were. It was a blast.

“Even people who aren’t NASCAR fans, they were excited for me and congratulated me.”

Thirty friends and family members also traveled to Richmond to be a part of the weekend.

“Another great part was I got to share this with my friends and family,” Lowry said. “Richmond International Raceway did a lot to accommodate them. They got pit passes for all my friends before the race, which was above and beyond. It wasn’t even their contest. My friends definitely got their money’s worth.”