The A
uto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway of Southern California -- that's a mouthful -- is finally history.
Hallelujah.
The seemingly endless nightmare that was Sunday's eventually aborted attempted running of the event impacted even those of us not forced to sit through the ordeal live and in rainsuits.
I mean, geez, has it ever been more difficult to tape a race? Even my 8-year-old couldn't keep up with it, and usually he's my ace tape-the-race guy.
Alas, before I complain too much, I'll just stop. I wasn't assigned to cover the race live for NASCAR.COM, as we rotate the writers who attend events to keep everyone fresh.
Fresh, but not necessarily dry. Get that one, Mark Aumann and Raygan Swan?
Those pour souls and tens of thousands others sat through Sunday's never-ending nightmare on location at the track formerly known as California Speedway. Well, attendance may have dropped off to merely thousands after probably 16 to 18 hours of unsuccessfully dueling with the raindrops (as well as pre-race and post-race traffic), but you get the idea. It had to be pure misery for them.
The rest of us were trying to watch the "action" on television. Little did anyone know that aside from two spectacular and possibly unnecessary accidents that took out the likes of Denny Hamlin, Casey Mears and a pair of Juniors in Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Sam Hornish Jr., the most exciting action to watch would result from speedway workers manning circular saws (read more).
Yes, the 2008 running of the Auto Club 500, which at least was completed Monday, was a bungled mess and cost NASCAR some of the valuable momentum it had built through Speedweeks and a competitive, exciting season-opening Daytona 500 one week earlier.
But could it have been avoided? Or should this one be chalked up to Mother Nature still being in charge -- and when she decides to mess with us, there's little or nothing any of us mere earthlings can do about it?
What went wrong
You can't blame NASCAR for trying to get the Sprint Cup Series race in on Sunday. The Nationwide Series event already had been postponed from Saturday -- first to Sunday and then, as the Cup event dragged on and continued to fight weather- and track-induced delays -- to Monday. NASCAR was trying (in vain, as it turned out) to avoid running both events on the same day.
But in the long run, NASCAR tried way too hard.
To recap, the race didn't start until roughly three hours after it was scheduled to begin -- and even then, there were legitimate questions about the wisdom of giving it a go. Just 16 laps into the event, driver Denny Hamlin lost control of his No. 11 Toyota and slammed into the Turn 3 wall.
uto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway of Southern California -- that's a mouthful -- is finally history.Hallelujah.
The seemingly endless nightmare that was Sunday's eventually aborted attempted running of the event impacted even those of us not forced to sit through the ordeal live and in rainsuits.
I mean, geez, has it ever been more difficult to tape a race? Even my 8-year-old couldn't keep up with it, and usually he's my ace tape-the-race guy.
Alas, before I complain too much, I'll just stop. I wasn't assigned to cover the race live for NASCAR.COM, as we rotate the writers who attend events to keep everyone fresh.
Fresh, but not necessarily dry. Get that one, Mark Aumann and Raygan Swan?
Those pour souls and tens of thousands others sat through Sunday's never-ending nightmare on location at the track formerly known as California Speedway. Well, attendance may have dropped off to merely thousands after probably 16 to 18 hours of unsuccessfully dueling with the raindrops (as well as pre-race and post-race traffic), but you get the idea. It had to be pure misery for them.
The rest of us were trying to watch the "action" on television. Little did anyone know that aside from two spectacular and possibly unnecessary accidents that took out the likes of Denny Hamlin, Casey Mears and a pair of Juniors in Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Sam Hornish Jr., the most exciting action to watch would result from speedway workers manning circular saws (read more).
Yes, the 2008 running of the Auto Club 500, which at least was completed Monday, was a bungled mess and cost NASCAR some of the valuable momentum it had built through Speedweeks and a competitive, exciting season-opening Daytona 500 one week earlier.
But could it have been avoided? Or should this one be chalked up to Mother Nature still being in charge -- and when she decides to mess with us, there's little or nothing any of us mere earthlings can do about it?
What went wrong
You can't blame NASCAR for trying to get the Sprint Cup Series race in on Sunday. The Nationwide Series event already had been postponed from Saturday -- first to Sunday and then, as the Cup event dragged on and continued to fight weather- and track-induced delays -- to Monday. NASCAR was trying (in vain, as it turned out) to avoid running both events on the same day.
But in the long run, NASCAR tried way too hard.
To recap, the race didn't start until roughly three hours after it was scheduled to begin -- and even then, there were legitimate questions about the wisdom of giving it a go. Just 16 laps into the event, driver Denny Hamlin lost control of his No. 11 Toyota and slammed into the Turn 3 wall.
At first the accident was blamed on a blown tire, but then it was determined all four of his tires were up. Hamlin said he hit a wet spot on the track that was like "black ice." Furthermore, he said there was so much debris from all the "speedy dry" that had been put down that he couldn't even see out of his windshield to try to figure out where the wet spots might be. The speedy dry was laid down not to combat the rain or water seepage, but because the No. 55 Toyota of driver Michael Waltrip had spewed oil all over the track during the parade lap before the green flag was dropped.
Michael Waltrip waited and waited.
"I think there are 42 other drivers that would agree that we should not be racing on that racetrack right now," Hamlin told reporters afterward.
If he wasn't one of them then, Casey Mears was five laps later when he hit yet another wet spot that sent him into a wild spin that ultimately collected the cars of his famous Hendrick Motorsports teammate (Earnhardt), Sorensen and Hornish. That accident ended with Mears' No. 5 Chevrolet turned on its side and Hornish's No. 77 Dodge in flames after running into it (watch video).
It also concerned NASCAR officials to the point that they finally admitted what Hamlin and others already knew: they had a water seepage problem. There were "weepers" in the house, and this was in reference not only to all those folks who paid for high-priced tickets and saw their envisioned day of fun in the sun getting washed away before their eyes.
This isn't the first track to suffer from weepers, and it won't be the last. It also has been an issue in between grooves at tracks such as Indianapolis, Texas and Martinsville. But this time it seemed particularly bad, plus continuing rain promised to make it worse, not better, as the night wore on and drastically cooler temperatures prevailed.
Water was weeping from seams in the track, particularly in the turns. So NASCAR did what only NASCAR might have done: it implored track officials to come out with the saws to cut channels in the track and help the weepers drain.
This process took one hour and seven minutes and, quite frankly, looked futile from the start no matter how many drivers or talking heads on television claimed that it seemed "the right thing to do."
America sleeps
Earnhardt was more sympathetic toward Mears than he was toward the governing body that seemed to be trying to get the event going at all costs (watch video).
"I think we were too excited. We got going a little too soon. The racetrack was a little dirty and everybody was losing grip and there were a lot of wet spots out there," Earnhardt told reporters. "Once you slip up, sometimes you don't save it enough. And Casey [Mears] got up there and into some water or dirt or something and ended up out of the groove.
"And way out of the groove is just terrible. It's like a dirt track up there. There was a lot of speedy dry and he just lost it. I didn't have anywhere I could go to miss him."
Veteran driver Mark Martin added: "This is really a tough deal. We just can't seem to get racing here."
The Mears accident brought out the dreaded red flag that froze the field for that one hour and seven minutes. But at about 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, NASCAR tried to go racing again. This time the race lasted about 20 laps before rain interrupted again, bringing out the third caution of the day from Laps 41-47.
Still more heavy rain came later, bringing out another excruciatingly long red-flag delay that made the earlier one look like child's play. Yet NASCAR stubbornly refused to call it a night until it was nearly 11 p.m. local California time, or nearly 2 a.m. Eastern -- about 11 hours after the scheduled start. All the jet dryers and all the king's men could not have kept the track from continuing to weep after all that rain.
And while the track wept, most of America slept.
Even the most ardent of the sport's followers couldn't stay with it that long, once again making everyone wonder, in the end, why in the France family's name do they keep coming to Fontana not once but twice a year?
In the fall, heat will be the issue if it's not raining again. Last Labor Day weekend the heat got so intense it appeared to cause track president Gillian Zucker to hallucinate, as she apparently mistook several thousand empty seats for paying customers during her post-race analysis of the event to the media.
And to think that it was unpredictable weather and empty seats that led to NASCAR moving the second date of its season out of Rockingham, N.C., in the first place.
Weepers, jeepers. The mere thought of making another trip to the place now called Auto Club Speedway is enough to make some of us cry -- or at least hope we're not on the schedule to cover the next race there live.
The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.
Michael Waltrip waited and waited.
"I think there are 42 other drivers that would agree that we should not be racing on that racetrack right now," Hamlin told reporters afterward.
If he wasn't one of them then, Casey Mears was five laps later when he hit yet another wet spot that sent him into a wild spin that ultimately collected the cars of his famous Hendrick Motorsports teammate (Earnhardt), Sorensen and Hornish. That accident ended with Mears' No. 5 Chevrolet turned on its side and Hornish's No. 77 Dodge in flames after running into it (watch video).
It also concerned NASCAR officials to the point that they finally admitted what Hamlin and others already knew: they had a water seepage problem. There were "weepers" in the house, and this was in reference not only to all those folks who paid for high-priced tickets and saw their envisioned day of fun in the sun getting washed away before their eyes.
This isn't the first track to suffer from weepers, and it won't be the last. It also has been an issue in between grooves at tracks such as Indianapolis, Texas and Martinsville. But this time it seemed particularly bad, plus continuing rain promised to make it worse, not better, as the night wore on and drastically cooler temperatures prevailed.
Water was weeping from seams in the track, particularly in the turns. So NASCAR did what only NASCAR might have done: it implored track officials to come out with the saws to cut channels in the track and help the weepers drain.
This process took one hour and seven minutes and, quite frankly, looked futile from the start no matter how many drivers or talking heads on television claimed that it seemed "the right thing to do."
America sleeps
Earnhardt was more sympathetic toward Mears than he was toward the governing body that seemed to be trying to get the event going at all costs (watch video).
"I think we were too excited. We got going a little too soon. The racetrack was a little dirty and everybody was losing grip and there were a lot of wet spots out there," Earnhardt told reporters. "Once you slip up, sometimes you don't save it enough. And Casey [Mears] got up there and into some water or dirt or something and ended up out of the groove.
"And way out of the groove is just terrible. It's like a dirt track up there. There was a lot of speedy dry and he just lost it. I didn't have anywhere I could go to miss him."
Veteran driver Mark Martin added: "This is really a tough deal. We just can't seem to get racing here."
The Mears accident brought out the dreaded red flag that froze the field for that one hour and seven minutes. But at about 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, NASCAR tried to go racing again. This time the race lasted about 20 laps before rain interrupted again, bringing out the third caution of the day from Laps 41-47.
Still more heavy rain came later, bringing out another excruciatingly long red-flag delay that made the earlier one look like child's play. Yet NASCAR stubbornly refused to call it a night until it was nearly 11 p.m. local California time, or nearly 2 a.m. Eastern -- about 11 hours after the scheduled start. All the jet dryers and all the king's men could not have kept the track from continuing to weep after all that rain.
And while the track wept, most of America slept.
Even the most ardent of the sport's followers couldn't stay with it that long, once again making everyone wonder, in the end, why in the France family's name do they keep coming to Fontana not once but twice a year?
In the fall, heat will be the issue if it's not raining again. Last Labor Day weekend the heat got so intense it appeared to cause track president Gillian Zucker to hallucinate, as she apparently mistook several thousand empty seats for paying customers during her post-race analysis of the event to the media.
And to think that it was unpredictable weather and empty seats that led to NASCAR moving the second date of its season out of Rockingham, N.C., in the first place.
Weepers, jeepers. The mere thought of making another trip to the place now called Auto Club Speedway is enough to make some of us cry -- or at least hope we're not on the schedule to cover the next race there live.
The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.
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