IN MY OPINION

Another rainy day
washes out racing

NASCAR will try again this morning to run at Michigan

DAVID POOLE / The Charlotte Observer

Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007

• Race Updates | Michigan 400
• Radar: Detroit (region includes Brooklyn)
• Slideshow | Sunday at Michigan

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- There was a window.

Sadly, it turned out to be a hole into which a lot of jet fuel was poured trying to dry Michigan International Speedway and get in the 3M Performance 400 on Monday.

It rained so hard Sunday night that Kasey Kahne said it kept him awake in his motorhome. It rained all Monday morning, too. But the precipitation eased just before noon, and NASCAR officials convinced themselves they saw an "opening" on the radar.

Jet dryers were dispatched and started making progress. But a heavy drizzle returned about 2:30 p.m.

Finally, just before 4, the race was rescheduled for 10 a.m. today.

If the race is run, it will be the first Tuesday event in NASCAR's top series since David Pearson won the 1978 Firecracker 400 in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Before NASCAR's modern era began in 1972, races were run regularly on weeknights.

As inconvenient as it will be today to have a race nearly 48 hours after it was scheduled, it would be imminently preferable to other options.

Plan B would be to move this race to the end of the season, the day after Thanksgiving. New Hampshire would become the 26th race, not Richmond, and championship weekend for the Cup series would change from South Florida to southern Michigan.

Wheee!

If the weather doesn't get better during the next 36 hours or so and the race can't be run this week, this season is going to become a bigger mess than it already has been.

Waiting stinks anywhere, but the stench is particularly foul at race tracks.

"Really, I have just been bored," Kahne said. "There is not a lot to do in these motorhomes. You run out of movies to watch. The satellite dishes don't work when it rains as hard as it has. You just wait and hope it quits."

Carl Edwards, who won at Michigan on June 17 and whose No. 99 Ford was fast in Saturday's practice, the last time Cup cars got onto the track, said he and his pals got so tired of playing video games they found a gym at a college nearby and worked out late Sunday, then came back to the track and tooled around the track's infield in an all-terrain vehicle.

"I can't wait for the start of the race," Edwards said.

He's not alone.

Today?

AT MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY

• 10 a.m. , ESPN2

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