Elva Burrows needs to recheck her figures, because there's simply no way that they're accurate.

Burrows co-owns Sambo's Tavern in Leipsic, Del., with her husband, Isaac, and she estimates that her staff serves maybe 300 pounds of shrimp on an average race weekend. No way. The gang from MRN goes through that much all by themselves. Thirty bushels of crab? Nope. Joe Gibbs Racing honcho Jimmy Makar would consider that just a warm-up, an appetizer before things really get serious.

If Bristol is the best race of the year, the second best is out of the team paddock area at Dover and on to Sambo's a few miles away. The food is that good and the atmosphere may be even better. Richard Petty and Dale Inman might be over in a corner, throwing down some crab. Bobby Labonte borrows a dollar for the jukebox. Crews from virtually every team in the garage show up.

Newspapers cover the tables, making cleanup that much easier. Diners wield wooden mallets to crack open their crab, then delicately work through them with the precision of a surgeon. Shrimp and crab shells pile up on some tables to almost eye level. Just 300 pounds of shrimp? No way. There's just no way.

The shrimp and crab, frozen when they come in the door, are steamed and not boiled. There's Old Bay in the seasoning, along with some other ingredients that Burrows won't name. That hurts. What's a little secret between friends?

"A lot of times, people boil it. You can't boil shrimp and you can't boil crab. If you do, they don't taste the same," Burrows says. "You steam it, and our shrimp seasoning is not just Old Bay. We mix our own seasoning with the Old Bay. We can't tell you [the secret ingredient]. We'd have to kill you."

Seating around 150 and scheduled to close Nov. 21 through April 1, 2010, Sambo's has a core group of regulars who visit the establishment every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night in season. Norm, Cliff and Frasier are good to go on race weekends, but most everyone else works in the NASCAR industry in some shape, form or fashion.

On Thursdays when NASCAR's traveling circus is in town, Sambo's honors standing reservations from race to race, season to season. If you or your team doesn't have one of those slots, it may be 9:30 p.m. before you can sit down to eat. Even then, it's probably going to be at the bar.

Racers have become almost like family.

"Jimmy Makar probably said it best," Burrows says. "When you look around the dining room on a Thursday night or a Friday night, he always said it looked like a driver's meeting."

Kyle Petty once helped tend bar. Another time, Petty and Michael Waltrip called on their way from a personal appearance at the other end of the state, begging Burrows to stay open. The place was open when Petty and Waltrip got there.

"We wanted to get out of here so bad, we'd open the crab and peel the shrimp for them," Burrows recalls with a laugh.

Then there was the time Burrows gave Bobby Labonte and some of his crew a ride to the airport, the brakes on her car squeaking all the way. Eli Gold called from his plane at 10 p.m., in flight over Richmond, Va., hoping that Sambo's would deliver food to his hotel. Sambo's doesn't deliver ... but they did that time.

"It's still a lot of fun, but I remember when it was a lot of fun ... a lot of fun," Burrows concludes. "It's been a good ride."