For years, NASCAR has heard the identical criticism from followers each time rain interrupted a race: don’t wave the white flag too early.
On Saturday night time at Chicagoland Speedway, NASCAR lastly gave followers precisely what they’d been asking for.
After thunderstorms delayed the beginning of the O’Reilly Auto Elements Sequence Cuervo 300 by a number of hours, NASCAR officers caught with their unique plan to race on Independence Day as a substitute of pushing the occasion to Sunday morning. The race ultimately roared to life nicely after midnight, delivering an time beyond regulation end that ended with Brandon Jones edging Chase Elliott for the victory.
Credit score belongs to NASCAR management.
Senior Vice President of Competitors Elton Sawyer and Managing Director Ben Kennedy might have taken the straightforward route. A Sunday postponement would have simplified logistics for groups, tv and officers. As an alternative, NASCAR remained affected person, labored by way of the climate, dried the monitor and made each cheap effort to race on America’s 250th birthday.
That call paid off.
By the point engines fired, neighborhood fireworks had fizzled out and yard cookouts had wrapped up. What remained was a nationwide stage with hundreds of devoted race followers nonetheless watching beneath the lights as Chicagoland Speedway produced one of the crucial memorable finishes of the season.
This wasn’t nearly salvaging one race. It was about exhibiting followers that NASCAR is keen to combat for the present.
For a lot of the final decade, followers have criticized the sanctioning physique for showing too fast to postpone occasions when climate grew to become an element. Saturday felt completely different. NASCAR exhausted each lifelike choice earlier than making a call, and that endurance was rewarded with a race that by no means would have occurred had officers merely known as it an evening.
It’s one other signal of a sanctioning physique that appears to be listening.
Whether or not it’s bringing Chicagoland Speedway again to the schedule, embracing new markets whereas honoring conventional venues, or giving followers the Fourth of July spectacle they needed, NASCAR continues to make selections that construct goodwill with its viewers.
Not each climate delay can finish this manner. Security will at all times come first, and there are circumstances the place postponement is unavoidable.
However Saturday wasn’t a kind of nights.
Sawyer, Kennedy and NASCAR trusted the method, trusted the followers to stay round and trusted that the climate would cooperate. They obtained all three proper.
Generally the most important victory doesn’t occur in Victory Lane. Generally it occurs within the management tower.
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