Washboard Yard

Fourteen metres of corrugated deck plate laid across the main straight, crossed nine times a race. Nobody is ever taken out by it and nobody ever finishes intact — it does not wreck you, it disassembles you, one rivet at a time, and hands the pieces back at the flag. By the last lap the difference between a finisher and a heap of parts is simply who crossed it more cleanly. The stand sells earplugs at the gate; the noise is not a side effect, it is the attraction.