Barber By-The-Numbers: 53,555

Another successful inaugural Indycar race is in the books, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the usual game of "guess the attendance" -- where one blogger announces that there were 142,000 paid racefans in attendance while another says that there was only 46 including himself -- was completely unnecessary. The Birmingham News is reporting 53,555 in attendance, a very solid number.

"Crowd estimates for the weekend totaled 84,000, with 53,555 for the main race on Sunday. Angstadt said the turnouts were higher at the league's first two races of the year in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and St. Petersburg, but he said attendance in Birmingham was excellent for an inaugural year."

While I certainly don't think that big numbers are everything, the crowd was much larger than I thought would turn up for in the middle of rural Alabama for a non-NASCAR event.

And just to close out Pressdog's new drinking game... "beautiful beautiful beautiful".