My Experence at Gingerman (for those who are intersted) (Page 1 of 2)

Yeah...about 70% of the folks running cars will be older than you.  Had you expressed those concerns I would have hooked you up with Priority Fail.  I got my Lemons cherry popped with them and they are all now pushing 30 but very young at heart.  The teams I am partnered with are all in their 20's (but one), on their first big boy jobs and run a Saturn and the horrible RX7.  Heck, one of my drivers is in his 20's.  Yeah, I look like a 60 year old homeless man but we have hosted drivers from 19 years old to 65.

Socially awkward...yeah, we got that too.  I won't out anyone but there are few guys that only "blossom" at the track among their piers and are otherwise about as introverted as possible without actualt living in their parents basements living off Cheetos.

Next time, strike up a convo with EVERYONE.  You got absolutely nothing to loose with this crowd.

I am not the guy that knows everything, but I am the guy that knows most of the teams that will have what you need if your car breaks at the track. I beg you to use that resource once you bring your car.  We can often get you back on the track while your guys are running to the parts store for the "right" solution
(which they should still do).

Judge Steve is not for the timid but in a lot of ways the funniest of them all once you get to know him.

If we didnt want slightly weird people to come up and strike up a conversation with us we probably wouldnt build such ridiculous cars. Also probably wouldnt have spent all of our race prep time building a motorized picnic table with a kickin sound system!

Next time come by the Lowballers paddock and say hey! We love having people stop by paddock. Bonus, if you come by we will probably offer you food or beer!

Valid point on the paddocks.  Showing up Friday helps but a lot of it is just familiarity...or not caring and just talkin to everyone.

Our paddock has a whole "living room" set up with seats removed from our racevan, a console TV and VCR, etc.  There is also the large (normally) fluffy yellow dog that will bark at you unless you come pet her.  Ours is unusually identifiable but again, doesn't matter...we are all friendly.

The racing is fun and all but I keep burning a huge chunk of my income in this completely insane hobby because I have never met group of people more easy going and enjoyable to be around.

I can identify with the whole being too shy to talk to strangers thing, especially when you're afraid you'll be bothering them. I'm fairly introverted, and was also very shy until some time in my mid-20s. (Somewhere along the way I also learned that shy and introverted aren't the same thing.) Back in college I would tear my shirt off and sing karaoke when surrounded by friends, but if I didn't know anyone at the party I'd hang out by the punch bowl.

One thing that helps in my experience is having a more extroverted friend to walk around with, so you can play Silent Bob to his Jay without feeling weird while you get slowly acclimatized to new people. A little booze can also help, of course. Aside from that my only advice is to say that like everything else, it gets easier with practice.

I would be on the shy side, not so introverted. I just don't have a friend who isn't the same way. Also, I don't partake in the beverages as of yet, so that doesn't help much. Next race I'm just going to have to walk around shaking hands with everyone I make eye contact with or something. Nothing gets you over your shyness faster, or gets you to have a panic attack sooner, than shaking hands with 50+ total strangers.

Yep...We do a walkaround most nights (and I do not mean just my team).  Thursday nights might be a bit early but is the least crowded and people usually haven't broken yet.  Friday night at the April races has 70% of the teams there with other 30% hiding in their hotel rooms with a lot of the 70% saying hello to folks they have not seen in months.

In the past we had a 19 year old driver that was shy in the extreme.  We brought him around on the Friday and Saturday night roving paddock parties and introduced him around.  We also picked him often to run around the paddock to the South while I headed North in search of (insert random tool, nut or bolt here) when we would break down.  I won't say any of this cured him of shyness but he did become comfortable enough with the Lemons crowd that it was a non-issue at the track.

Final option...use a prop.  Come steal my giant fluffy yellow dog for an hour.  Roxy will get everyone talking to you whether you want it or not.  For Gingerman, do it about 10 AM Sunday when all the teams are up and likely puttering around doing little stuff on their cars during the quiet hours before we can start our engines. 

Another prop is come meet tSoG the Bacon God and hang out next to the bacon table (likely with Roxy).  Everyone comes to see him for his meat candy.  Soggy knows everyone and is more than happy to introduce you and might even hand you a plastic jack-o-lantern of bacon to take to the judges.  Soggy usually bunks down in our padock and cooks the bacon there as well.

Interesting thread we got going here.

Lemons was much the same for me - it was so novel to show up and see so many different teams and types of personalities, and since it was my first race _ever_ I thought I was way out of my element. 

Then you start helping to wire a 300ZX kill switch, see how broken Honda axles come in and out in a jiffy, refuel a few cars. . . it's a quick apprenticeship - and you realize that people think you actually might know something.  And maybe then you realize that you do.

. . and I remember clearly at Sears one of the Rolex team asking for advice on a guibo-y engine mount dohickey on their Rover/Lexus smashup and thinking 'these guys actually ask me for help, listen, and trust what I'm saying.  Amost no one ever does _that_ in the real world!'

At this point I wander the pits which _always_ have good hospitality, asking teams 'how the heck are you so fast?' (Volvo 245 teams, still have no idea, they downplay it heavily), or 'what kind of idiot are you?' (Jaguar/K/usual suspects) and it's all good.

Interesting is right. This was not at all what I envisioned happening with this thread.

We "stopped by" a couple of pits to look at cars but never bothered anyone with a hello. People are scary, cars are cool. I wish there was a list you could find with all the teams and their locations. Then we could actually reach out to people and actually consider hanging out or something, that way when we show up we wouldn't actually be going there knowing nobody.

If you are talking about our 245 (the only one there)  I am total honest about that car, and don't downplay anything. There just isn't anything done to it worth noting. Although, to be fair I did take it to a dyno once, and picked up 10% because our fp was way off, but can't drive it on the street.  That brought us up to 110 whp.  Not bad for a 2800 lb car.

That may have been the quietest Lemons car I've ever seen, even more so than the Jet Electrica.