Rain postpones Dover race until Monday at noon ET
Rain postpones Dover race until Monday at noon ET
By Dave Rodman, NASCAR.COM
June 3, 2007
04:19 PM EDT
DOVER, Del. -- Rain on Sunday postponed the Autism Speaks 400 at Dover International Speedway. It has been rescheduled to run on Monday at noon ET.
Monday's race will be shown live on FOX and heard on MRN Radio, which will begin broadcasting at 11:30 a.m.
The rain abated enough for NASCAR to ignite its fleet of jet blowers for about half an hour, until approximately 1:52 p.m., before rain again began pelting down.
NASCAR announced the postponement at about 2:15 p.m., just after the teams were told to bring their cars to the garage from pit road. Before that, the day's greatest excitement might have been when the No. 70 Haas CNC Racing Chevrolet damaging a brake duct when the ramp to NASCAR's scale pads malfunctioned.
With as much as a couple inches of rain forecast Sunday, teams knew they'd be looking at a "green" racetrack, but with a harder Goodyear tire in use this weekend, some said it might not be as much of an issue as usual.
"In years past, it would've been a pretty big difference because the Goodyear tires in the past have been softer and laid down more rubber," rookie David Ragan said. "This weekend is the first weekend here at Dover that you really hadn't seen that much rubber laid down.
"So it's not going to be a huge change, but tires will wear out fast whenever we do race. The track is going to be real green and it'll be real abrasive."
One of Ragan's Roush Fenway Racing teammates, Matt Kenseth's crew chief Robbie Reiser, agreed with his assessment of the racetrack.
"It doesn't really disrupt you preparation-wise, but it does give you a different racetrack than what you've been running on," Reiser said. "For some reason the track is not building any rubber this weekend, so I don't know if it's going to be that big of a deal [though] in the past it's always been a big deal."
Bud Pole winner Ryan Newman's No. 12 Dodge and Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 8 Chevrolet are scheduled to lead the 43-car field to the green flag in the sixth Car of Tomorrow race this season.
The Dover postponement is the third in the last four Nextel Cup points events to be moved, with the others being Richmond and Darlington. Both of those races were scheduled to be Saturday night events but moved to Sunday for weather.
The last Cup event postponed by rain at Dover was the May 1975 Mason-Dixon 500, which began on Sunday before being completed on Monday, when David Pearson won.