Originally scheduled for Sunday (Oct. 3), the NASCAR Cup Series’ YellaWood 500 will now be run at 1 p.m. ET Monday (Oct. 4) after intermittent rain shut down operations at Talladega Superspeedway.
Heavy rain hit in the morning and a window appeared to be open for the 500-mile race to get started, but after a two-hours-late command, no sooner had the cars started rolling on pace laps when the rain hit again, coating the frontstretch and first and final turns in more precipitation.
Denny Hamlin will start on pole with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch alongside.
According to weather.com, the chance for rain and/or storms ranges between 36% and 56% between noon and 7 p.m.
Drivers will be back in their cars and try again at 1 p.m. Monday, with coverage on NBC Sports Network.
Adam Cheek joined Frontstretch as a contributing writer in January 2019. A 2020 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, he covered sports there and later spent a year and a half as a sports host on 910 the Fan in Richmond, VA. He's freelanced for Richmond Magazine and the Richmond Times-Dispatch and also hosts the Adam Cheek's Sports Week podcast. Adam has followed racing since the age of three, inheriting the passion from his grandfather, who raced in amateur events up and down the East Coast in the 1950s.
Once again, NASCAR and NBC screw the fans with late start times. IMO, they weren’t going to make the scheduled distance anyhow before it got dark.
It was supposed to start at 1:00 local time.
Would it have made a difference in this case? I got the impression that it was wet and drizzly all morning but, since I don’t live there, I really don’t know.
I thought it was a later start time. Sorry folks.