April 25, 2015 Holly Cain/NASCAR.com
RICHMOND, Va. – The Toyota Owners 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Richmond International Raceway scheduled for 7 p.m. ET Saturday night has been postponed to 1 p.m. ET on Sunday due to inclement weather. FOX will carry the race.
Saturday night’s rain out was not a huge surprise to the NASCAR teams who have learned to practice amateur meteorology themselves and saw the forecast earlier in the week.
NASCAR officials said that Saturday night’s decision was made after assessing weather forecasts and consulting with government and law enforcement officials. Unlike last weekend’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway, forecasts did not provide any suitable window of opportunity for precipitation to end and to dry the track.
Rain began around noon Saturday and picked up intensity shortly before the driver/crew chief meeting at 5 p.m. – two hours before the green flag.
“I know it’s a rough day,” RIR track president Dennis Bickmeier said during the meeting, acknowledging the threat of delays. “Thank you for hanging with us.”
And while the rainout is aggravating and inconvenient the drivers have come to accept it as a part of the job. Persistent showers last week at Bristol Motor Speedway meant several race stoppages before the checkered flag finally fell almost 10 hours later.
“It is tough a lot of times because you have your whole routine in the morning you go through with appearances and drivers meeting and do all your stuff and then you sit and wait,” pole-sitter Joey Logano said. “At that point you start to relax again. It just changes a little bit. It is like any other athlete. You get in your mode and do the same thing every week before the race or before a game and when it rains it kind of throws you off a little bit.
“Usually by the time you get back in the car, they give you enough warning the race is about to start and you get your head back straight again and off you go. Usually it isn’t that big of an effect for what we do.”
Knowing that it’s going to rain, however, doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to prepare for the race. Moving the race from night to day or day to night creates an extra challenge for crew chiefs.
“Even if it does rain and I know there’s a possibility I guess it would be a day race which might change it a little bit.” last week’s Bristol winner Matt Kenseth said. “It might bring it more back to your notes for [practice] today than what your typical adjustments are for night time.
“Like I said, for me I don’t have a really good handle or feel on how this track changes from day to night during a race and all that, so [crew chief] Jason [Ratcliff] probably does a lot better than me.
“For me, it’s always kind of a guess. I’m not sure what I’m going to get when the race starts. Whenever I’m pretty confident I know what the track is going to do, it seems like my car goes the other way. Just kind of leave that up to Jason and the guys to figure out.”
From a practical level, Sprint Cup Series Managing Director Richard Buck told the drivers there would be a competition caution on Lap 50 of the 400-lap event. The race would be legal with 201 laps completed, but NASCAR always tries to finish its races, as it did last week at Bristol, including a green-white-checkered finish after a red flag for rain.
And the Air Titan track drying machines have greatly shortened the time it takes to get the track race ready.
“When this place gets the rubber washed off of it, it is really, really fast for a little bit,” second-year driver Kyle Larson said. “But then it wears out tires quicker. You have to think about that kind of stuff. I’m sure we will have a competition caution at some point so you have to be patient at the beginning of the race. And the track will change a whole bunch throughout the whole race.”
