The Great Race is one of those events that looks like it would be relaxing and fun, but that is way more competitive and grueling than you might think. The Hot Rod Hoarder, Tommy Lee Byrd, has been involved in this race since its inception and knows it as well as anyone. So when Tommy puts out a video from this race, you know it is going to be good and we were excited to see this one on our playlist. I’m going to let Tommy talk about the event, and give you all the details you might want in the video description below, but watch the video to see it all unfold.
Video Description:
The Great Race is the most grueling two weeks of my year because it’s non-stop from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. But when someone asks me at a gas station about all the stickers on my vehicle, or what I do for the Great Race, I simply tell them I get paid to chase classic cars up and down the back roads. And while it requires long hours and a long time away from my family, it’s one of the most satisfying adventures of my career.
I started photographing the Great Race in 2011, which is the first year of the event’s operation under Coker Tire’s ownership. I was already an employee of Coker Tire at that point, so it was natural that I go on the event and provide photography and articles about the epic time, speed, distance rally. The route changes every year, allowing me to see nearly every state in the lower 48 and it’s given me the chance to photograph these cars in absolutely breath-taking locations. Crater Lake, Mount Washington, Pikes Peak, just to name a few. This year, the Great Race went from Owensboro, Kentucky to Gardiner, Maine. The scenery for this year’s route wasn’t mind blowing but the competition was tight and the towns were packed with spectators that loved welcoming the Great Race to their home.
Typically, on the Great Race, I am so focused on photographing the event and providing social media coverage, website articles and magazine articles that I don’t have time to provide any type of video coverage here on Youtube. This year, that changed. I enlisted the help of my wife, who handled a lot of the video clips that I pieced together each day as a highlight reel for Great Race’s social media pages. I then strung those highlight reels together to make this video, and tried to tighten it up a little here and there.
Still as more than 40 minutes long, it is only a glimpse of what we see during nine days and 2,300 miles across America’s back roads and scenic highways. To find out more, you can go to www.greatrace.com, where you’ll see thousands of my photographs, and lots of explanation about the scoring system, and what it takes to compete at this level.
