Yesterday's Chevy Rock & Roll 400 ended Richmond International Raceway's 33-race streak of sellouts, but even with the smaller crowd, traffic was nightmarish before the race as fans had less time to arrive for the 1 p.m. start.

Aimee Turner, RIR's director of publications, said that until this week the track had hoped it would have a 34th consecutive sellout, even though other NASCAR tracks have seen attendance lag as gas prices soared and the economy struggled. RIR seats about 112,000.

"Until Monday," Turner said, "we were tracking ahead of our race in May. Then [Tropical Storm] Hanna took over."

Turner declined to give an attendance figures for yesterday's Sprint Cup race.

Sprint Cup events always cause severe backups on roads around the track. Yesterday was no exception. Turner said having the race start in the early afternoon rather than the evening -- the result of a one-day postponement because of Hanna -- made a difference.

"When our race starts at 7:30 p.m.," she said, "fans start getting here at 7:30 a.m. That gives us 12 hours to get everybody parked and in the stands. Today, we only had about five hours."

In a quick sampling, fan assessment of pre-race traffic yesterday at RIR ran the gamut from "No problem" to "It was horrible."

For Don Noland, who uses a cane, and Vivian Kelly, who is in her 80s and uses a walker, the drive from Norfolk went well.

"No problem," Noland said.

"We're both handicapped, and we got plenty of help," he said. "And traffic didn't slow up too much. We parked, and one of the track shuttles picked us up. We got into the track about 11:30 or 12."

Kelly, smiling, said: "There are some awfully nice people here. Everybody helps us."

Things weren't nearly that smooth for Nan and Danny Martin of Doswell, who came with Chris and Lori Cauthorne of Ashland.

"It was horrible," Nan Martin said.

"I'm going to write that Doug Fritz a letter," she said, referring to the RIR president. She said she wasn't sure what the solution to backed-up traffic is but said a study needs to be done.

Fritz would say later that RIR welcomes feedback, even when it's negative. "We want to address any problems we can," he said.

Nan Martin said perhaps the first change would be signage on the feeder roads.

"If we had stayed in the right lane on Mechanicsville Turnpike, like the sign said, we'd still be there," she said. The last few miles of the trip took an hour and 20 minutes, she said.

Speaking of that right lane on Mechanicsville Turnpike, David and Kim Winnett of Rocky Mount, N.C., did stay in it. Along with their sons Alex, 11, and Cole, 12, and friend Mike Hood, they watched other cars ignore the sign directing race traffic and cruise by on the left only to pull in line later.

It took them about two hours to reach the track from Interstate 295.

"They should put up the cones and have somebody there to funnel race traffic into one lane," David Winnett said.

James Waterfield and his daughter, Stacey, left their house in Norfolk at 10 a.m. -- plenty of time, they thought, to get to RIR in time for the race. That was until they got off I-295 at Mechanicsville Turnpike, where they got stuck in traffic for two hours.

They parked with hundreds of others in a warehouse parking lot near the track and walked in.

"Hopefully I'll be able to get out of here," he said.

Kevin and Kenny Barnes of Fredericksburg had their own solution -- one not recommended by area police. They left the main feeder roads and wound through neighborhoods to get where they were going.

They left Interstate 95 about 9:30 a.m., Kevin Barnes said, and were parking within a half-hour.

"It was slow," he said, "but we kept moving."

Contact Randy Hallman at (804) 649-6440 or rhallman@timesdispatch.com.

Staff writer Chris Young contributed to this report.