Anyway, that was the hope. The reality was watching the race on Monday afternoon, after rain drenched central North Carolina Sunday night. Rain had truncated the weekend's practice sessions and the Nationwide Series race Saturday night, and on Monday it did the same, forcing NASCAR to call the race with just over half the laps complete. That's 227 of 400 laps, but with three or four breaks for rain on the track in that time span. One of the broadcasters jokingly called it the "24 Hours Of Charlotte," but sadly, he was only an hour or two off from being right.
One of my friends was at yesterday's race. Maybe that's why I felt more for the fans than I did say, at the Daytona 500 this year when it was rain-shortened 48 laps shy of the finish. Of course, I didn't know anyone in the stands that night, and it sent my favorite driver to Victory Lane, so who was I to complain? Not surprisingly, my first time at the track was in the midst of a rainstorm. It was Loudon in 1995, the Busch North/Modified Tour prelude to Sunday's Winston Cup race. My dad and I watched practice in the morning, then settled into the grandstands for the Busch North cars...and watched as rain fell with 92 laps complete. We left for the truck, changed into drier clothes, and headed home, where we learned that they did restart the race after a few hours of drying the track off.
It sucks to be at the track in the rain. There's nowhere to hide, unless you're one of the lucky few to pack the grandstand terrace under the hospitality suites or you can make it to ground level to duck under the grandstands themselves, where you may get dripped on by rain or a spilled beer. Donning a poncho and stashing your scanner becomes a race against the clock, especially when the ponchos inevitably slide to the bottom of the scanner bag under the extra sets of headphones. If you decide to bolt, now you have to gather all your crap with you in hopes that none of it gets wet. And then, after you find cover and the rain blows over, they have to dry the track. Your choices are to browse the souvenir alley for new Dale Jr. t-shirts, or watch the parade of safety vehicles and jet-engine blowers circling the track at low speeds. And you pray that the hour or two of jet-engine whine and wasted time aren't all for naught when a stray cloud feels the need to rain just a bit more on your parade.
If the race isn't to halfway yet, you're stuck there wondering, will they get this restarted? Will we have to come back tomorrow if they can't dry the track? How will this mess with my schedule? If the race is past halfway, you're stuck there wondering, will they get this restarted? Will they just call it early? How long are we going to have to wait to find out?
The fans yesterday got treated to both questions.
Weather aside, this year's World 600 wasn't shaping up to be the most exciting race. Most of the green-flag laps were led by none other than Kyle Busch, whose strongest competition seemed to come from Brian Vickers, whose pit crew (as per usual) fell short at every opportunity. That's probably why, when the final red flag flew at almost 4:30, I wished NASCAR would call the race official. They had run past halfway, not much but enough to make it legal. They started the race not long after noon, and since then had red-flagged the race twice for rain already. A race that normally takes four hours to run to completion was already four and a half hours in, with no end in sight. I'm sure most of the drivers wanted to go the distance. But the fans had already been there the day before, and a few hardy ones were still in the stands Monday afternoon, hoping for a finish to the race they'd come to see.
NASCAR called it two hours later. They did a lot to get this one in. But at 5:00, I think they should have looked at the radar, acknowledged that everyone was already into their second day at the track, and called it a race.
I imagine calling a sporting event on account of weather is one of the hardest decisions to make. You need to balance both the integrity of the event and what's best for the fans' safety and sanity. You have to make a judgment call that'll get criticized if the weather changes after you make up your mind. It's really a no-win. That said, I think they made the right call last night, but at the wrong time. Let's say that the rain had stopped by 6pm. They may have been able to get the race restarted by 7:00 or 7:30. With two hours left to race, provided there was no more rain, that would wrap up the race at 9:30 at night. Give the remaining fans an hour to get back to their cars and pack up their tailgate parties, and then they have to get home. I was always spoiled; we live an hour from Loudon. On Cup race weekends, it would take us three hours, at least, to get home from the track. What of the fans who don't live just around the corner? In hindsight, it just seemed impractical to hold out until 6:30 at night to decide the show was over.
I guess, as a fan, you make your bed when you decide to go to an event that's weather-dependent. I dreaded the thought of them kicking on the lights for an evening ending. I thought back to the season finale at Atlanta in '98, a marathon that ran well into the evening hours by the time it got started, a race I only saw in replay footage the next day. It had been two long days for the Charlotte fans already; to stretch it out into Monday evening would have been unreasonable.
David Reutimann became the sixth driver to win his first career race in the World 600 yesterday. Granted, it was largely due to pit strategy, but with Keselowski's win a few weeks back, we've had a couple upsets this year, for sure. Too bad David's victory was overshadowed by the weather; hopefully he'll claim another one before long. I'm not a Reutimann fan, but I can't help but like a guy who runs his dad's old number and who almost didn't get a shot at the big time because, at 37, the sponsors felt he was "too old" to meet their expectations.
So Loudon is in a month. I wonder if I can coerce anyone to go.
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