California Rainin’ Rant
Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog
I got a couple of e-mails questioning NASCAR’s decision to keep trying to get the race done on Sunday instead of just moving it to Monday.
I find that no matter who you are, you are going to have a biased opinion on this - myself included.
I’d promise to try to be objective here, but I’m not making any promises.
Here is my opinion:
No matter what NASCAR did on Sunday they were screwed. Period. You know, “you are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”.
Speaking from a perspective of one who missed a whole entire race because of rain, I would have been more happy seeing 87 laps than none at all as I couldn’t stay the extra day or two to see the re-scheduled race.
NASCAR is about the show, and I feel they have an obligation to put that show on for the paying fans at the track without putting their drivers in danger in the process.
What happened to me at Michigan last Aug. sucked. I knew there wasn’t going to be a race when they didn’t even have the cars out on the track, yet the went through driver introductions anyway. Why did they do that? For the TV audience and their TV contracts, not for the fans at the track.
In Michigan, there was a window of about 2 hrs prior to the race where they could have gotten some racing done, but since they had to live up to their TV contracts NASCAR couldn’t start the race earlier. I say screw the people at home in their lazy boys and put the race on when you can. ESPN, Fox, or whoever, can broadcast the race at their regularly scheduled time and do it on a tape delay as most people wouldn’t even know the difference or they record the race and watch it later anyway.
California was a little different, the rain was in the morning so they had to start the race later which is no problem as it gives NASCAR more exposure on the television networks for the rain delays.
Speaking from my personal experience, I support what NASCAR did on Sunday in trying to get the show in. Did you see how empty the stands were on Monday? NASCAR tried its best to get the race in for the fans at the track and they should be commended for it, although I doubt Denny Hamlin would agree.
Sorry Denny, what happened with the water seepage onto the track was not NASCAR’s fault, it just got worse as the race went on and they could not have seen that.
What I find weird about this is that, according to a comment that was left a few days ago, NASCAR apparently uses a train to shuttle people to the track and the train would not leave the track until NASCAR officially called the race. If this is true, I think NASCAR should have let the train leave at the time it should have if the race had run its regular course and then they could have brought it back for later, but I don’t know the logistics about this so I really can’t offer up anything more than what I just said.
Photo Credit: Harry How/Getty Images.
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