LOUDON, N.H.: Sunday’s USA Today 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway wasn’t the first “official” use of wet-weather tires by NASCAR, but it sure felt like the one that helped usher the sport through the threshold to the next era of stock-car racing.
Battling pop-up rain showers nearly all day — followed by thunderstorms, lightning and the faint threat of a tornado watch to the south later in the afternoon and evening — the hurdles standing between NASCAR and a complete race were aplenty.
Thanks to the teams’ ability to implement Goodyear’s wet-weather product with NASCAR’s direction, the race saw all 301 laps completed — and then some.
A nearly two-hour delay in the final stage with the “Magic Mile” getting absolutely pelted with downpours for most of that window would’ve typically made it an easy call for NASCAR to wave off the remainder of the race with driver and fan safety and coming darkness in mind after needing to dry the track. Instead, drivers were able to re-fire engines at 6:43 p.m. ET and run all the way to the finish on wet-weather tires, with Christopher Bell — who got a little bit of experience on them in Saturday’s Xfinity Series win as well — emerging victorious for the weekend sweep just after 8:10 p.m. ET.
“Oh, we would have (had to call the race if we didn’t have wet-weather tires). We’d have been done with 82 laps ago,” said NASCAR SVP of Competition Elton Sawyer. “It gave us an opportunity to get back green. You know, we were up against it with daylight as well, but kudos to our teams, our drivers, our owners, and especially Mr. (Jim) France for his vision.
“I think the way we started this whole wet-weather-tire-process was basically we wanted to get our races started on time. And it really played into our hand yesterday to get the Xfinity race started on time and to get our races back to green as quick as possible if we’ve had a delay, which we had today, so you know, kudos to Goodyear. Again, this was Jim France’s vision of what wet-weather tires could do. We ran 301-plus laps today. Went into the overtime. Our fans that bought a ticket, they got to see some great, exciting racing. And there’s still some things that we’re learning through this process and in all honesty, we’d like to be out of the tire business. We’d like to just turn that over to the teams. But as we continue to take small steps and learn, eventually, we’ll get there. We just want to do this in the safest way possible.”
Battling pop-up rain showers nearly all day — followed by thunderstorms, lightning and the faint threat of a tornado watch to the south later in the afternoon and evening — the hurdles standing between NASCAR and a complete race were aplenty.
Thanks to the teams’ ability to implement Goodyear’s wet-weather product with NASCAR’s direction, the race saw all 301 laps completed — and then some.
A nearly two-hour delay in the final stage with the “Magic Mile” getting absolutely pelted with downpours for most of that window would’ve typically made it an easy call for NASCAR to wave off the remainder of the race with driver and fan safety and coming darkness in mind after needing to dry the track. Instead, drivers were able to re-fire engines at 6:43 p.m. ET and run all the way to the finish on wet-weather tires, with Christopher Bell — who got a little bit of experience on them in Saturday’s Xfinity Series win as well — emerging victorious for the weekend sweep just after 8:10 p.m. ET.
