The weather this past weekend was brutal for motorsports.
At Watkins Glen International, there were three short bouts of rain during the Sahlen’s Six Hours at the Glen, each of which resulted in big crashes.
New Hampshire Motor Speedway saw the schedule knocked out of whack for the entire weekend. The Modified race ended up running at 10 a.m. ET Saturday (June 22). The Cup race was moved up to a 2:06 p.m. ET green flag on Sunday (June 23), which NASCAR stuck to.
That extra 40 minutes or so ended up being pretty critical. Had they started at the originally scheduled time, they would have struggled to make it to halfway before the rain showed up. Worse, it likely wouldn’t have been possible to finish the race before darkness fell, knowing what we know now.
You would have had a 160-lap race instead of 305. If the spate of cautions that we got ended up coming before halfway, then you could have been in a situation where NASCAR comes back on Monday to complete the race since they couldn’t have run the 301-lap scheduled distance Sunday.
NASCAR ultimately stopped the race before the lightning got within eight miles of the track. That was helped by the race already being under yellow for an unrelated reason (Kyle Busch’s second crash of the day).
During the delay, NBC Sports spent the first 20 minutes or so interviewing a number of drivers and crew chiefs. Then, the shutdown occurred due to lightning. In this scenario, Parker Kligerman and Marty Snider set up camp in what looked like the NASCAR Xfinity Series garage to anchor coverage. Kim Coon chipped in with interviews from a safe area.
There was also some alternate coverage from Iowa that kicked in at 6 p.m. ET. During that time, there were plenty of updates from back in Loudon. Anyone watching would have had no doubt as to what was going on at the track.
Now, did the red flag need to be as long as it was?
At least 80% of it.
You can’t race with lightning around and a lot of the rain was pretty heavy. We saw Sunday in Watkins Glen that even sports cars can’t do much with standing water. The No. 5 Porsche at the beginning of this clip was on rain tires.
Last year, I talked about how I compare NASCAR’s rain tire setup on ovals as “working as designed,” but designed incorrectly. In the Truck race at Martinsville in April of last year, the Trucks used the rain tires for approximately 30 laps. My thoughts at the time were that NASCAR waited far too long to start the race and seemed to not want the teams to be able to help themselves.
For some reason, NASCAR didn’t have the wiper and rain light setups on the cars this week. Can’t even explain that. The idea of the non-competitive pit stops irritates me. They had three of those Sunday. There’s no reason for that. Just exasperating.
NASCAR did restart earlier than they would have last year. The NBC Sports booth kept track of how the lap times progressed as the track dried out. They also analyzed the various lines that were being used by the drivers.
For lack of better words, New Hampshire Motor Speedway has never been wider. Even in the dry in recent years, you’re getting more lanes. In the moist conditions, there were drivers running from the apron almost all the way to the wall.
If there is a specific term that I would use to describe the broadcast booth over the last 80 laps, it would be wonder. They were just amazed at what the wet tires provided as far as racing went.
Unfortunately, the final stretch of the race Sunday was also a bit of a wreck fest as there were six yellows.
Prior to the rain, the broadcast was fairly decent, but the race really was quite middling. NASCAR’s Loop Data is somewhat inconclusive about the race. There were 200 fewer passes under green this year, but a higher average per lap.
How is that possible?
One is the fact that there were 40 fewer laps under green this year due to the 14 cautions (there were 44 more caution laps, but the race was also extended four laps due to a late caution and last year’s race was not extended). I also think that the period of the race run on wet tires was more competitive than the dry period.
Sunday’s race had a grand total of six lead changes. Only two of those were truly competitive and both involved Christopher Bell taking the lead.
Effectively, that meant that NBC Sports had two different races to call. The first 219 laps were not the most exciting to watch, but the broadcast was inclusive enough that you could still enjoy yourself watching it. There was action to be had, but you had to search for it.
NBC Sports is willing to search for it.
Post-race coverage was relatively brief since the race was already more than two hours over the scheduled sign-off time by the time it finished. Heck, it was running up against both darkness and more rain. It should be noted that PRN Radio’s broadcast did note the impending darkness, but not that additional rain was getting close to the track.
Viewers got interviews with the top-three finishers (Bell, Chase Briscoe and Josh Berry) plus Ryan Blaney and a check of the points before leaving Loudon.
Overall, I did enjoy the broadcast, but it was obvious that the situation left NBC Sports feeling constrained. They couldn’t do any pre-race coverage due to the schedule on USA Network where the Cup race was supposed to be the middle race of a tripleheader. By the time they came on air, the cars were already rolling out for the pace laps.
The timing of everything made it rather difficult to get an idea of how the rain tires handled the drying 1.058-mile oval. If I were to give the rain tire usage a grade, I guess it would be a C+. A- for the on-track action, D+ for execution. The non-competitive stops are the pits.
The commentary was on point nearly all day on Sunday. I have no complaints there. The earlier portions of the race really weren’t all that exciting, but they made it better.
That’s all for this week. Next week, NASCAR has a tripleheader weekend at Nashville Superspeedway on tap. The ARCA Menards Series will be at Berlin Raceway as well. TV listings can be found here.
We will have critiques of at least the Ally 400 from Nashville in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex will cover the SciAps 200.
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Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.