NASCAR officials need to review their inclement weather policy after what took place yesterday at the Auto Club 500 in Fontana, California. Currently, there only seems to be one rule: Get in the race on Sunday at all costs.
It rained a ton this weekend in Fontana. The rain also unloaded on the track again several hours before the race was to begin. Once the rain let up, all parties agreed, including the drivers, that the race could be gotten in yesterday if two things occured: 1) NASCAR dried the track sufficiently, paying special attention to weepers (seeping of water through cracks in the track) that are notorious at Auto Club Speedway (formerly California Speedway), and 2) No more rain came down.
Neither happened.
In thier zeal to get the race in yesterday no matter the cost, NASCAR didn't take the time after they dried the track to make a double-check to see if the infamous weepers were rearing their ugly heads. Well not until they allowed the drivers to do that for them, at least.
You guessed it. As soon as the cars got to moving, and the green flag flew, the weepers kicked in and massive puddles were created on the track. The puddles were big enough to be seen on the television coverage at one point, and even those of us without HD could see them. Naturally, several cars ran through the water, spun out, hit the wall, and were out of the race within the first 20 laps. (Remember: NASCAR mandates that the tires on the cars have no tread. They are known as 'slicks'. Appropriately titled for yesterday).
It was only after Casey Mears had an incident with the weeper puddles, whereby his car ended up on its roof, did the NASCAR officials red flag the race and decide to take care of the problem. Anyone ever heard of the word "proactive"? NASCAR knew that this track in particular has had this problem in the past when it rains, yet didn't take the extra time to monitor the situation before the race began.
Listen, we all understand the issues at hand here. If you cancel the race and run it on Monday, you lose a signficant portion of your television audience, it makes your revenue sponsors unhappy, it all ties into money. We get it.
But shouldn't the safety of the drivers come before the money guys? I mean, isn't this the very same organization that spent millions on research in order to develop what eventually became known as the Head And Neck Safety restraint (HANS)? They did that only in response their most popular driver, Dale Earnhart, dying on the track. Is it going to take somebody else, like maybe Dale's son, Dale Earnharnt, Jr., succumbing to the same fate before they re-evaluate their inclement weather policy (assuming there is one, and there is serious debate of that after yesterday)?
After Earnhardt, Jr. was collected in the aforementioned Mears crash, he had this to say, "The track's real dirty and everybody's sliding around. The track ain't ready today. The track's dirty, and this was a bad move." Denny Hamlin was the first car to tangle with the weepers, "...we should not be racing on that racetrack right now. I hit a slick spot and my car took off. I hit a wet spot and I'm not going to be the last." The Casey Mears incident happened just a few laps later.
The sad part of all this is that this a problem, unlike on-track collisions, that is easily rectifiable: Get tires with tread. Period.
NASCAR teams have the world's best engineers continually developing new engines that can generate 10 more horsepower than ever before, or get 10 more miles per gallon than ever before, and conversely, NASCAR itself has some of the world's best engineers to oversee the team's engineers and make sure they aren't cheating. You're telling me with all that MENSA-like brain power involved, NASCAR can't come up with a set of tires with tread that can run on wet surfaces? Seriously?
The Car of Tomorrow (COT) debuted at several tracks last season. This season it has become the Car of Today, as it will be run at all tracks. Before that car design ever hit a single track in testing, NASCAR asked Goodyear (the exclusive tire provider) to come up with a tire with new rubber compounds that will allow the car to run properly. They did this because the COT has some design features that had never before been used on a stock car (mainly a rear wing). Goodyear got right on it. As of this writing, there have been no significant problems with tires on the COT.
You're telling me that Goodyear can invent new molecular compound structures for tires, but they can't figure out how to put tread on a racing tire that allows these stock cars to run on wet surfaces?
The old argument to all of this has always been that it doesn't matter anyway because the cars don't have windshields that are made of glass, therefore they can't have windshield wipers. Without wipers they'll never be able to run in the rain.
Pardon the pun, but that doesn't float.
You don't, and shouldn't run these cars in the rain itself. You wait for the rain to stop completely, then give the crew a few minutes to install the "rain tires" and away you go. You don't have to waste time even bothering to dry the track because the cars have tires that can handle the wet surface. Or, if it makes NASCAR feel better, they can have a reduced drying time, get the track somewhat dry and send them out. Either way, it's less time for the fans to wait during the delay, the cars are safer on the track, and NASCAR can keep their hell-bent way of attempting to get races in on Sunday.
It doesn't take a genius, or a NASCAR engineer, to figure that out.
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