No writer ever calls them out on thier non-sense. Clearly, I don’t care, so I will. These people get paid to make decisions, that’s in a nutshell their job. Now, I’m not talking about the officials on pit road, or in inspection, etc, I’m talking about the people we just call “NASCAR”. “NASCAR” gets to decide if we postpone a race, or delay it, how long we wait, etc. “NASCAR” decides penalties, and well, to be honest I’m not sure what else they do. It must be something huge because they really stink at the other two.
I went to sleep at 10:30pm EST last night. The race was red flagged at the time and my ocal news was on so I really had no idea where they stood. But I do know how “NASCAR” works. I know from countless times they have done it before, they they would drag out the delay for hours and hours, saying “we will dry the track and get the cars going soon”. It seems like a sick game, they can see the weather radar, they can tell that they are not going to get this race in, yet they keep the drivers, teams, and fans at bay while they sit around waiting to officially call it. I hate that they have to ”officially” call it. When everyone else in the world has already unoffically called it in their head.
Now you probably are thinking, “okay Katie what is the big deal? They are just trying to be 100% sure they don’t miss a chance to get it in on Sunday.” That’s fine, but when it’s clear it isn’t going to happen, then do us the courtesy of calling it at a reasonable hour. From the fans perspective, there are a lot of reasons waiting for hours to do that is extremely irritating.
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Watching it at home, especially on the east coast, it got late! NASCAR fans are normal people, they have jobs to get to, school to get to, things to do on Monday morning, they can’t stay up all night Sunday watching the rain fall at a racetrack because the officials and TV announcers keep feeding them false hope.
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Being at the racetrack is worse, I know from experience. These fans wil stay in those seats until it is official. What if they head home and while they are driving away the race gets going? That would be pretty awful. The race fans at the track aren’t typically able to check weather radar and see. ‘NASCAR” can, and when they se there isn’t going to be a break, and that the track is too wet already, CALL IT. These people don’t need to sit in the rain for hours on end waiting for you to make a decision. It is completely insane.
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The drivers and teams. They generally know that “NASCAR” is wasting thier time, so I’m sure they prepare and already know they are not going back racing, but they still have to stay out there all night until they call this thing officially postponed.
Here’s my problem, i can understand waiting all night for a break if it is already past halfway, and it would be over if they don;t go back, but when you have a whole other day waiting for you to finish this race, then just call it! It really isn’t that hard, I called it at 10:30 when I went to sleep, I was done with it. Unfortunately, I know plenty of people that stayed up, sticking with that false hope “NASCAR” dangled at them. That just is a bad way to treat the fans. I think “NASCAR” gets to full of itself, they seem to forget this is a sport, for entertainment purposes. It isn’t Congress. You are there simply to entertain the viewers. Rain hitting pavement is not entertainment. Cars driving in circles at 2am when everyone on the east coast is sound asleep is also not entertainment. They needed to take that into consideration as well. All the people on the east coast either gave up up on it earlier, or stayed up way past bed time to watch… nothing. Figure it out “NASCAR”, because apparently, that’s all your job is anyway.
Katie, is it me or is NASCAR too worried about impressing everyone but those of us in the Eastern and Southern halves of the country?
I mean the start times make absolutely no sense anymore to me, I think the over-obsession with night racing is actually backfiring on the sport right now and California was a good example of that.
The thing that ticks me most off with the NASCAR of the past few years is that they’re trying to cater to the West Coast fans, who had to watch races that previously started at noon or 1 pm at say 9-10 am. Their logic was to promote the races so that the West Coasters would see the races at the time us East Coasters before, only we’d have to see them at 4 pm (and thus the traditional “afternoon” nap was exhausted and lost). It’s a real shame cause the sport didn’t have to do that, cause to NASCAR’s “surprise,” those out in the California/West Coast area would prefer to see a race that started at noon, 1 PM EDT.
And night racing is no longer as cool as it was. It’s becoming what the domed, astroturf stadiums for football and baseball of the 1970s are to us now.
Do Nascar Pit Officials have other jobs