Cup drivers would give it a go in the rain

For the second straight week a NASCAR Sprint Cup race succumbed to rain, forcing a 24-hour postponement. Of interest during Sunday’s coverage of the rained-out Heluva Good! at the Glen, run at the famed Watkins Glen road course in upper New York State, was a turn by reporters finally beginning to ask the obvious—something we’ve been harping on here for the past two years: When are they gonna race in the rain?

Intriguingly, several NASCAR drivers interviewed spoke of giving it a try. Patrick Carpentier, a road-course specialist and former IndyCar driver who raced at Montreal in last year’s mold-breaking Nationwide Series race in the rain, said “it was a lot of fun,” referring to the Canadian race. But Carpentier felt the heavier weight of the Cup cars would make rain racing impossible. “They’ve got way too much power,” he said, ultimately concluding that “it would be fun for the fans but not for us.”

In an insightful comparison between IndyCars and Sprint Cup cars, Sam Hornish Jr., who has raced in both series, noted the relative weight and downforce differences between the two. The Car of Today weighs 3,500 pounds and creates about 1,000 pounds of downforce from an 800-horsepower engine. The lighter IndyCars, at 1,500 pounds, generate 600 horsepower, creating about 4,000 pounds of downforce.

Drivers David Stremme and Kevin Harvick also weighed in on the idea of racing in the rain. Harvick pointed out vision as the main problem from the driver’s standpoint. “The windows fog up,” he said, eliciting a slight guffaw from race analyst Rusty Wallace, a former Cup champion. “Yeah, but that’s fixable!” Wallace rightly pointed out. Harvick then tried to duck under the protection of “rooster tails,” the rainbow-like aftermath of spray from cars ahead that virtually blind a driver, and which no doubt would be something totally foreign to NASCAR drivers in the heat of competition. But look at F1, whose drivers constantly face vision and rooster-tail dilemmas whenever there is rain at a grand prix race. As Wallace likely would have said: it’s doable, boys.

Stremme remarked that stopping the big cars “might be a problem,” before musing “but it’d be fun to try,” to which Harvick also agreed.

Trust me, there will be more on this topic as NASCAR continues to watch its Sunday afternoon audience vanish due to rainouts. Solutions? We’ve got plenty. But that’s for another time…and another rainout.

INDYCARS sped through the twisting turns of Mid-Ohio, the classic road course in Lexington, with standings leader Scott Dixon taking the lead on Lap 37 of the 85-lap Indy 200 from Justin Wilson, as both came up on backmarker Milka Duno. Duno effectively “picked” Wilson, with Dixon wedging between the two before disposing of Duno two turns later. Dixon was never headed after that, winning comfortably for his fourth victory of the season, and more importantly, his 20th overall series win, taking over the top spot all-time in IndyCar series victories. He had previously been tied with Sam Hornish Jr.

Read Alan Ross’ article “Leaping Lords,” on receivers Larry Fitzgerald and R. C. Owens in the current issue of Lindy’s Pro Football 2009 Preview at newsstands everywhere. E-mail: alanross_sports@yahoo.com© Sportland 2009