green-white-checkered finishes in NASCAR this season, the Sprint Cup and
Nationwide races can’t even get started in rainy Texas.
Persistent wet weather Sunday forced the
postponement of a Sprint Cup and Nationwide doubleheader until Monday.
The Sprint Cup race was called Sunday about 75
minutes after its scheduled 3:16 p.m. EDT start because of persistent
drizzle and the forecast for misty conditions until late in the evening.
The race was rescheduled for noon EDT Monday.
“It is disappointing not to race, but this
happens now and then,” said Ryan Newman, who starts 10th a week after
winning at Phoenix International to break a 77-race winless streak. “I
think we are going to be good [Monday]. We just have to live with it. It
is part of racing.”
Rain on Saturday wiped out the Nationwide race
then. It had been rescheduled for Sunday night after the Cup race and
will now be run at approximately 5 p.m. EDT Monday.
About 2 1/2 inches of rain fell at the track
Saturday and Sunday. The forecast Monday calls for cloudy skies with
only a minimal chance of rain.
If both races are run Monday, that means 15
drivers face the potential of 801 miles behind the wheel — 501 miles in
the Cup race and 300 more in the Nationwide race.
The last time there were 800 miles of NASCAR
racing on one day was Oct. 11, 2003, in Charlotte, N.C., when both Cup
and Nationwide races were run. Jamie McMurray and Michael Waltrip both
ran all 534 laps that day, and Kevin Harvick ran 533.
The only other time Cup and Nationwide races
were run together on a Monday was in February 2008 at California.
But that day in California was only 624 miles.
The final 162 laps — or 324 miles — of the rain-delayed Cup race were
completed before the running of the 150-lap Nationwide race.
When the Texas races were called Sunday, there
was still a light mist in the area and it would have been futile to try
to dry the track until that stopped. Under ideal conditions, it would
take about 2 1/2 hours to dry the 1 1/2-mile, high-banked track. But
with cloudy skies, temperatures in the 50s and high humidity, the
process could have taken significantly longer.
There has never been a Cup-Nationwide
doubleheader at Texas. The only time a Cup race here was pushed back to
Monday was 2002, and the postponed race drew an estimated crowd of
187,000.
Fans with tickets for either race will be able
to attend both Monday.