It rained on Sunday and NASCAR postponed the Daytona 500. Why?

In Europe (say Le Mans 24 hours or the Nuremberg races), they change tires (to a more aggressive tread) and the drivers reduce speeds to about 160-175 mph and keep on racing. Why does NASCAR cancel its races? Anyone know?

NASCAR contemplated racing with rain tires and ran some tests 25 years ago, guess it didn’t work out.

Fans sitting there in the rain ain’t too appealing either. The cars aren’t set up for wet Weather racing as you could clearly see the dash cameras showing leakages on the interior and on the drivers. Tarps were covering the cars as they sat waiting on the track to dry.

For sure some folks got hosed with the delay considering hotel reservations, rescheduling air flights, etc.

NASCAR is entertainment, not necessarily pure racing. The huge crowds in the grandstands don't want to sit out there in the rain and watch a (relatively) low speed parade. Ditto for the millions of people who watch on TV. With the tires and suspension systems and even the aerodynamics of the cars optimized for dry conditions, simply changing to rain tires can't make enough of a difference to make the racing interesting, or profitable for the people putting on the show. The drivers are sort of like Hollywood actors- - - - - -they're just cogs in a much bigger machine, and the machine just isn't adaptable to changes in weather patterns.
Jerry

Visibility, or lack thereof, would be one of the main reasons. It's is hard enough in road racing when you come up to pass another car, but usually in road racing you are not running at sustained high speeds with a pack of 20 plus cars. The drivers couldn't see anything and on TV it would probably look like a horizontal hurricane. Also, cars in NASCAR don't generate the downforce generated by prototypes and Formula 1. While Indy cars will run rain tires on road course tracks, they don't at the ovals.

Indy cars and F1 cars weigh half as much and their tires are twice as wide. They don't run in the rain on oval tracks because of G-Force and speed. They only run in the rain on road tracks where the speeds and G-Force are much less. Actually, as of a few years ago, NASCAR does run in the rain with rain tires and windshield wipers on road courses also. It seems as though they really haven't had any rain events during a road course race yet. Even with an Indy Car weighing half as much and tires twice as wide, on a wet track, the speed and G-Force would send them into the fence in short order.

Exactly why I give it up (mostly) before Earnhardt died, and totally afterwards. Used to be NASCAR racecars weren’t that different from what sat in showrooms. They all started out as actual passenger cars that were modified.
Drivers were a completely different breed. They weren’t always the best sort of people. They partied and acted wildly, and lived for the balls to the wall, inherently dangerous sport that was motor racing. Some were downright selfish jerks on and off the track, and all had a drive to win, meaning they were selfish jerks when the green flag dropped. Sportsmanship did not exist on the track.
They all understood this. Dale had two personalities, his public persona being very much different from the driver on the track that us Ford and Mopar guys loved to hate!
Today’s cars are purpose built with safety as important as speed. Nothing stock about them, and most don’t even resemble the cars they’re portrayed to be.
As you said, today’s drivers are as much actors as they are racers. “Pops” Turner and “Little Joe” Weatherly wouldn’t be welcome now. Image is just as important as ability now.
It’s no longer a sport as much as it is an entertainment business. The tracks and the fans that supported NASCAR through its start and growth are not even valued compared to big money crowds on tracks where NASCAR wouldn’t have been welcome 30 years ago.
Safety for drivers is now much more important than it had been, purely because of public perception. Just as Football has made sacrifices in competition to improve safety, so has racing.
Not meaning to sound bitter, but money and greed have ruined sports as much as it has government. All professional sports are entertainment businesses now. Competition takes a backseat to profitability. Love of money has corrupted nearly everything.
Hope Newman recovers and is able to continue his career if he wants. If not he’ll probably find a home broadcasting, or maybe just retire from public like Ernie Irvan did years ago.
7mm

No need for any 9 paragraphical replies

Because rain sucks

I'm old enough to remember when dirt tracks were the backbone of the racing scene- - - - -race a while, fight a while- - - - -"It's only cheatin' if ya get caught"- - - -pitch in and help your competitors in the pits get ready to race, then become bitter enemies on the track, and buy each other beer at the after-race hangout.

One night at Antioch California a bunch of us from Merced had convoyed about 80 miles for a big end-of-season 100 lap race on Labor Day weekend. One of our group blew up his engine during time trials, but managed to qualify for the main event in the process. Another guy had a spare engine on his car hauler- - - - -a block and cylinder head assembly without accessories. They made a deal, and three pit crews swarmed over the car and swapped engines in just under 2 hours. He finished the race, and went home with a pretty good payday- - - - -didn't quite break even, though. Antioch was an interesting place to race- - - -we had to run against the local drivers, the crowd, and the track officials! Talk about playing against a stacked deck!
Jerry

Because it is GAY and there is absolutely nothing STOCK about it! NASCAR has become a complete Sh_tshow!

Hey man, shorten those replies, we ain't into editorials......

Exactly!!

I will like to add that the movie The Art of Racing in the Rain is absolutely terrible. About a racecar driver that has about everything go wrong in his life...followed by a dog who is voiced by Kevin Costner. Ridiculous.

This may come as a surprise to you, but this isn't goddam Europe, and I am thankful it is not. There's really not a whole lot more to be said.

The fact that this ? was asked......

pretty childish reply...to an honest question.....bob

It’s still like that in the amateur level. You’ve got your selfish jerks, and you’ve got great people off track who will kill to get to the checkered!
That’s how Dale Sr was. He had a charm that he could switch on for an interview, he gave away equipment and help when no one was looking. But he was pure terror on the track. Downright dirty on occasion. But he raced that way. So did Childress and Junior Johnson and the Wood brothers and other famous owner/drivers.
An awful lot of the NASCAR drivers from that era were that way, but now, I sometimes wonder if Dale would be able to get a top flight team because of the way he sometimes drove. The guys who are perceived to be “dirty drivers” are weeded out to a large extent, because selling tee shirts and toy cars is every bit as important as winning races.
Dale Sr lived at a time where he was already established as a top driver by the time image became important. I don’t know his style of driving would be tolerated now. Look at Ernie Irvan, Jimmy Spencer and several others. In the 90s, the times were changing and guys’d who had a bad reputation weren’t that popular with the fans. They got Jobs with second rate, low money teams or no ride at all.
7mm

Bill France was the ultimate showman- - - -probably a close second to P.T. Barnum. If a driver managed to break away and get a good lead on the rest of the pack, it was not uncommon for a bogus yellow flag to get flown at France's directions for "debris on the track". Of course, that bunched the cars up and made for more interesting racing for a while. Some of the TV commentators used to make snide remarks about "Here comes Pierre DeBree again!"
Jerry

As I understand it, NASCAR decided to race only in dry conditions out of fairness to all manufacturers.

These are “stock” cars which means they match fairly closely with what you or I can find on dealer lots. Outside of the paint jobs and such.

So the problem with racing in the rain is that stock Fords and Chevys don’t really work well in the rain what with all the leaks and the engines won’t stay running and all that. Only the Toyotas could complete even the first lap let alone the whole race so NASCAR just decided to call it.

F1 is racing. NASCAR is a joke.

Now there is about as big a load of BS as I've seen lately, even for the Campfire!! LOL

Cars weigh more than cars run in Europe and other places.

Indy and F1 cars have a crap load of down force.

Besides stock cars typically are not totally sealed up and leak water like a sieve.

And the wipers make the cars look gay.

Can you come and talk to my garden in a few weeks? I'll save a fortune on fertilizer!
Jerry

16bores BS blew stickfights BS out of the water.

We are in the company of BS masters it seems.

I am pretty sure he was being facetious.

I grew up at the time NASCAR was nearly unknown unless you were a “car guy”. Before the ‘79 Daytona 500 and later, cable tv with ESPN coverage, you read short, maybe a paragraph reports in the paper, and maybe if you were lucky, highlights on network tv. If you wanted stock car racing, you had to make the effort to follow it. The fight at the end of the 79 Daytona race made racing popular enough to get national attention for the sport!
Later on, ESPN put NASCAR on the map in the 80s and 90s. Their coverage was pretty good, and they did a lot of behind the scene stuff that made it very interesting for car enthusiast or bored tv viewers!
I also remember several incidents where somebody blew up or got wrecked, and had a microphone shoved in the window before they had a chance to turn on their public image! Words got bleeped, and guys got fined for acting human on camera!
NASCAR was starting to change. Mopar and AMC had already quit, because rules were made to favor other brands and make a better show. Olds and Pontiacs became unknown, because if you didn’t have big bucks and factory support, it was much harder to be competitive.
Then the France family started to auction off tv rights and canceling races at smaller more interesting tracks to get into bigger money market areas. ESPN’s great coverage was sacrificed to network money and advertising. Long supporting fans who lived near tracks like Wilkesboro and even Darlington lost opportunities to see races so people from Chicago or California would buy t-shirts and toys. The France family turned their backs on fans, carmakers, and racetrack promoters who helped them grow so they could make more money from people who never heard of NASCAR a few years ago.
They pretty much killed my interest. I watched occasionally, but didn’t want to spend hundreds of bucks to attend pro races when $12 or $15 got you a night of local action with guys i knew.
I wasn’t a Earnhardt fan, but you still had to admit his talent made things happen. When he died, the connection to the old days died as well.
If you’re an old guy like me, and remember honest to God cars turned into racecars, and honest to God competitors who loved racing at its base level, the flavor was gone. We who raced locally called it “studio racing” or WWF Wrestling on Wheels. Most of us spent our Sunday afternoons working on racecars, not watching it.
Putting up lights and racing on Saturday night took longtime fans out of local seats for national television coverage, and us local drivers, most of us ignored it altogether.
I would never sacrifice a true friendship in order to bow to people who paid better. I got the same respect for NASCAR now that I’ve got for politicians.
7mm

Because this is America not Europe.

Somebody should start a thread asking why we don't hoist a surrender flag as readily as they do in France.

You think that NASCAR is a race-- it is a show!
The show must go on!
Folks do not want to sit in the rain--

We were in a restaurant last year and they had some kind of races on tv. They looked like modified factory cars, mostly jap or European, and they ran on road courses that actually had part of the track made up of dirt or clay.
I think it’s called “Super. Cars” but I don’t know for sure.
Even around here, Hobby racing on dirt or asphalt is going to pot. It just costs too much money if you wanna be competitive. The only modified cars you see are street stock and bomber classes, usually cars from the 70s or 80s. All the upper class cars are purpose built racecars from the ground up.
My brother and I were lucky in that Dad had an auto salvage. We took a couple old V8 Chrysler’s out and welded in frame connectors and roll cages. The motors were completely stock. We put in new rings and bearings, and put the valve covers on the wrong side, otherwise the oil on the right side blew out the breather! In 25 laps of left turns, you can throw out well over a quart of oil! Ask me how I know!
It cost a lot of money for Wheels and tires, but everything else we did come out of the junkyard. Even with that support it was hard to be competitive. It’s fun but it’s expensive.
Now, with Dad gone and the salvage closed, it’s just too damn expensive. I’d love to do it, but I don’t have the money or the resources and shop to work out of, and Wifey’s got no interest in it. I devote my time and money to shooting and hunting.
Most new cars have all the personality of a washing machine or a refrigerator now, so it’s a thing of the past for us. Most of the guys we raced against either give it up or got sponsors with bigger pockets. Car dealerships or well financed auto repair shops.
I learned two things in my years on a dirt track:
1 You can only go as fast as your wallet can afford to!
2 The best way to make a little money racing is to start with a helluva lot!
7mm

At the Le Mans 24 hour race, cars pass each other (in blinding rain) at 160 mph. The race has four classes of cars racing (some can do over 200 mph, while some "production" cars can do 150 mph), so passing speeds vary even with the very limited visibility. Accidents do occur, but they still race - isn't that what's racing all about?

Huhh? Are you saying that the Europeans are more gutsy than NASCAR drivers?

Yes he is but they're still better than Commie Queers from Colorado.

First sumbitch to hoist that flag gets shot in the nut sack!

You have a good point , dis.

The way I’ve heard the 24 hours of Le Mans is that it’s the equivalent of motorcycles’ Six Day Trials (enduro) event.

Iirc, Paul Newman was quite a competitor at the 24 hours annual race.

And the fastest lap at Le Mans lap is 155mph, so that means they also had a lot of slow areas of driving. The fastest completed 500 mile race at Daytona alone is 177mph.

There is a reason why even Indy cars don't run ovals in the rain. High banked oval tracks, rain and racing don't work well together.

Le Mans doesn’t have any cambered turns to speak of. Any way you cut it Le Mans is a punishing test of men and machines.

NASCAR tries to keep their events more fan centric. In Lemans how much of the race does the average fan get to see? How about Bristol?

This ain't Europe, and I am glad it ain't. No Euro-envy here.

No envy involved here. Watching something for 24 hours is akin to listening to the annual Iditarod for the duration.

I did really enjoy “Ford vs Ferrari “, though.

Nascar Cup and Xfinity both are able to run road courses in the rain, but have found too much danger trying to run ovals at speed in the rain. I really like road racing and find the Nascar road races some of the best races of the year.

Looks like we are going to get a real F1 race here in S FL next year, and I definitely will be there for it. I remember running my SCCA Camaro Z28 on the old Miami Grand Prix track through downtown Miami every year as a track tester, and really miss the road racing days. Hopefully the natives don’t throw themselves on the track by Joe Robbie because of the “noise,” and ruin the race. I guess we will see, but they are already on every tv station down here crying because they will not be getting paid and the economic impact it is going to cause. Seems the banana republic city commissioners and mayor have been adequately greased, so the race looks like its a go.

Have we pretty much established that shotguns aren't allowed in pistol competitions because the two disciplines within shooting sports are different?

Can you shoot them in the rain?

Very good and educative posts by guys with knowledge.

What total Steaming pile of Bull chit.....

I don't find European style racing to be entertaining, but I don't say much about it because nobody forces me to watch. I do like NASCAR. Nobody is forced to watch that either. Apparently a lot of people here know more that they understand about both.

You have a point. F-1 drivers actually have more driving skills...

F1 car, basically an upside down fighter jet. Enough down force to make it stick in a curve if it was on ice.

Pre programmed, or changeable by the driver & the crew chief, changing wing angles to create the proper down force for curves, straight, or changing track conditions.

Adjustable turbo boost(horse power) & traction control for coming out of turns at full throttle but not spinning the tire. Applicable to wet tracks as well.

1300# with 15" wide tires on the back. So delicate that if two cars were to just bump, both are likely to sustain enough damage that they may no longer be competitive.


Cup car, 3450# 11.5" wide tires, none of the above options. Hint!

Pre Sr. days cars still had some identity. After Sr. died they went to the world car which means you have a basic chassis with bodies that have minor differences. So basically you have a field of cars that are all the same. The only difference anymore is what team did the setup. Racing in stages and all the other modern stuff is not racing but TV BS. I remember back in the 70's Richard Petty blew an engine, drove it behind the pits and his team changed engines and was back on the track and finished the race. You will never see that happen now.

It's one thing to race and pass in the rain, especially when you have different classes on the track, it is an entirely different thing to try to race in a pack of 30 cars that are drafting each other for lap after lap at very high speeds - in the rain. When road racing in the rain, you have moments when you have no visibility when you are approaching and starting to pass another car- but it happens quickly. Riding around in a draft for lap after lap in the rain could be done - but it would be really, really slow.

Yep.

They are simply different disciplines. I am surprised some folks need a 6 page discussion to get that.

It doesn't take NASCAR 24 hours to figure out who won.

It might if they raced in Iowa.

There are very few drivers from either discipline (I'm putting Indy/Cart/F-1 in one basket here) that are able to "cross-over" and run successfully. Robbie Gordon, John Andretti, and Tony Stewart made it work for a while. Montoya for all of his success in open wheel surely didn't thrive in NASCAR despite running top-end equipment.