During the course of the 1980 auto racing season, every track I visited, with the exception of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was new to me.

It was both exciting and daunting to be learning the ins and outs of new venues nearly every week. One thing that did help, though, was that I got to know a lot of the people that traveled the racing circuits, making it a bit easier to acclimate to new places.

The hardest thing about that first year was negotiating the traffic on race day.

The crowds were generally small or at least manageable for practice and qualifying days at all of the tracks. But race day was a horror story _ at least for me.

I quickly developed what I called my "rules."

At the smaller tracks, where race day crowds were generally easier to deal with, I had a "three-hour rule," which meant I got to the track at least three hours before the start of the race, thereby beating most of the traffic.

At the midsize tracks, the rule expanded to four hours. And, at Daytona, Indy and Pocono, it was a five-hour rule.

That worked great for getting to the tracks. But leaving was an entirely different story.

I found that, generally speaking, I finished my writing about two or two and a half hours after the races ended. You might think that would mean most of the car traffic was gone by then. But you would be wrong _ very wrong.

With crowds often over 100,000 _ some even a lot more _ getting cars out of race tracks, many of them with limited roadways, often took up to four or five hours. And, once you actually got out of the parking lots, what was waiting for you on those roadways was more traffic.

Talking to veterans of the racing wars, I found out that many of them had "secret" ways to avoid the worst of the traffic. I listened and took notes from them as much as possible.

But that didn't always work, either.

Finally, I decided I would try to develop my own escape routes. It meant leaving the family a day early, but I started heading for the racing venues on Thursday instead of Friday. Some tracks had practice sessions on Thursday and some didn't open until Friday, but getting there a day early gave me the opportunity to learn my way around the tracks and, more important, to drive the back roads and try to find my own ways out.

I spend a lot of time driving on roads that went nowhere near where I wanted to go. I tried dirt roads and gravel roads, turned left when right seemed more likely, and vice-versa. Eventually, I discovered some great alternate routes.

Often that meant driving 10 miles to avoid one mile of crawling traffic. But I'm always happier when I keep moving.

Still, there were some places where there was really no escape.

Dover Downs, which had only two roads in and out, was one. Michigan International Speedway had numerous bottlenecks outside the track grounds and no easy outs. And, in later years, Texas Motor Speedway was a traffic jam waiting to happen. These were tracks where it was best to just bring some extra work or a good book to read or plan on joining the track PR staff for their traditional pizza dinner in the media center or press box and wait for the roads to clear.

After a full day of work, often starting at a very early hour, it was particularly frustrating to sit in traffic for long periods of time on the way back to my hotel or on the way to the airport for a red-eye home, worrying the entire time about missing the flight.

But easily the most frustrating incident came about 10 years into my auto racing career while attempting to leave Watkins Glen International Raceway, a beautiful road course set in the rolling hills of the Finger Lakes in New York.

The track PR man let everybody in the press box know that, if you were heading back toward Concord, your media parking pass allowed you to make a left turn out of the track, drive about a quarter-mile to a dirt road that would take you down a long hill and deposit you out of most of the traffic on the highway toward your destination.

Tory and Lanni, both in their early teens, had come with me that day and worked in the press box, handing out papers and drinks and running errands for the PR staff.

As I approached the highway outside the track, the policeman directing traffic let the car in front of me turn left. I started to follow and the policeman stepped in front of my car and pointed to the right. I pointed to the media pass and mouthed the words, "I'm media and I want to turn left."

Again he pointed to the right. I tried to make my case, but he wasn't hearing me. Finally, I turned right and, in my rear view mirror, I saw car behind me, with a media parking pass, turn left. I have no idea why that guy refused to let me go the way I wanted, but instead of a fairly comfortable half-hour drive, it took nearly two hours in heavy traffic to get back to the hotel.

I was so angry I was pounding on the steering wheel as we sat in a line of cars just outside the track. But Tory, sitting in the back seat, said, "Don't worry about it dad. At least we're together."

I calmed down immediately, turned on the radio to a music station that the kids liked and didn't complain again until we got back to Concord and I was telling Judy the story over a later dinner.

Race day for the Indy 500 was always an interesting experience, too.

I was always nervous the night before the race, both about covering the race and about getting into the track, which in the early days drew more than 300,000 spectators, many of whom came early.

For the first few years, we lived in Indianapolis and I drove from home, trying to take the route of least resistance. By leaving very early, I usually made it to the infield parking with little hassle. But, after I began coming in from out of town, it got a little more complicated.

Since I was the "expert," the other out-of-towners relied on me to decide when to leave the hotel and what route to take into the track. We would line up a half dozen or so cars and I would lead the wagon train, leaving the hotel at about 6:30 a.m. for the 11 a.m. start of the race.

The hotel we stayed in during those early years was less than two miles from Gate 9a, the press entrance to the track. But you just never knew how the traffic would be.

If our timing was bad, we wound up sitting just outside the entrance watching dozens of school buses, loaded with bands from Indiana high schools and Purdue University, entering the grounds. Other times, it went like a well-oiled machine.

One year, Shav Glick, the veteran motorsports writer for the LA Times, and his good friends, PR maven Hank Ives and San Diego Union sports writer Bill Center, decided to forego our little motorcade. Shav left his car parked in the media lot at the speedway the night before the race and the trio walked in the next morning, carrying only their laptops.

It seemed like a good idea, but, since most of the AP's out-of-town crew were counting on me, I decided to keep on making the drive until such a time when it became too frustrating. It never got bad enough to walk.