Why has Nascar stopped road racing in the rain

DanicaFreak

DanicaFreak

She's crazy.
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I did some research and saw that the NNS series races in the rain at road courses
I would like nascar to do the same at roadcourses

Anyone know why they stopped? I know Mark Martin did some testing at one time for the cup cars?
 
With the extra 100 horses Goodyear can make a tire to make it worth while. In addition I don't think any tire would work in the rain at Sonoma with the elevation change at turn 2 so maybe they figure it's not worth the money to do R and D just for Watkins Glen.
 
nascar did some testing with "rain tires" years ago, but I don't think they ever intended to actually race in the rain. I think the idea was more for when the track wasn't completely dry after a rain shower.
 
DanicaFreak said:
F1 does it...Im just perplexed
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The center of gravity is much higher on a stock car than an F1 car.
In dry conditions when you turn the wheel of an F1 car, it turns.
When you turn the wheel of a stock car, you hope it turns.
 
mreed said:
The center of gravity is much higher on a stock car than an F1 car.
In dry conditions when you turn the wheel of an F1 car, it turns.
When you turn the wheel of a stock car, you hope it turns.
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No kidding there. Also the weight is another huge disadvantage. Indy and F1 cars are light (1600-1800 lbs) while a Cup car is 3450 lbs. Also the Cup cars produce half or in the case of F1 less then half the downforce. It just doesn't add up to a good idea, or good racing.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
There's nothing good about racing in the rain. Not for the people at home or the people at the track wanting to see a good race.
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I was thinking driver skill.....you need to be very skillful to drive a stock car around in the rain.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
There's nothing good about racing in the rain. Not for the people at home or the people at the track wanting to see a good race.
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This sums it up. The people who want to see rain racing are watching at home and can't find anything better to do while they wait out the delay.
 
Even if they could race in the rain, I'm not sure I'd want them to. Seems like it would be a dog of a race if they tried to go out there on a slippery track.
 
I've been to a couple of stock car races in the rain recently. The NASCAR Canadian Tire Series 2011 race at Trois Rivieres was ran (i believe entirely from lap 1 until the checkered flag) in the rain. Pretty clean race if I recall correctly. Also saw the 2010 ARCA race at Palm Beach, which I believe ran dry for the first 10 laps or so, again it was a very clean race, probably more so than any other ARCA race i've been to. Nothing wrong with running stock car races on road courses in the rain IMO, and NASCAR still does it north of the border.
 
DanicaFreak said:
I was thinking driver skill.....you need to be very skillful to drive a stock car around in the rain.
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And here I was thinking about the entertainment value. We've seen Nationwide do it recently and it wasn't that good of a show. The novelty of it all wore off rapidly and we were left with a subpar race. For me personally, I don't care at all how well these guys/gal can navigate a wet surface. I already know they're skillful. I watch them each week.
 
DanicaFreak said:
good info. I just dont like idea of not racing due to weather...-sigh-
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I don't think any of us like the rain delay, but these cars just don't behave well in it. It's really really hard to drive one to start with( exception being Daytona qualifying, Just mat it and pick a good line) Maybe they could have a back up plan where each week in the event of rain the drivers would race 4 wheelers in the infield mud. :D
 
BamaFan said:
I don't think any of us like the rain delay, but these cars just don't behave well in it. It's really really hard to drive one to start with( exception being Daytona qualifying, Just mat it and pick a good line) Maybe they could have a back up plan where each week in the event of rain the drivers would race 4 wheelers in the infield mud. :D
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Racing in the mud. Love it.
 
TexasRaceLady said:
Wasn't it in Japan that the cars raced in the rain. The one thing I remember most clearly is that they threw up so much spray you
couldn't see anything.
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I thought it was Canada. It was insane to even try with how hard it was raining.
 
Matthew2470 said:
This sums it up. The people who want to see rain racing are watching at home and can't find anything better to do while they wait out the delay.
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Yep. The best part about incoming rain in F1 or IndyCar is the strategy of pit stops to put rain tires on. It's a real cat and mouse game of when to put tires on. The reverse is also true, I saw a great CART race in 2001 at Portland where Max Papis was leading with like four laps to go and the rain stopped and the sun came out and he had to dive for every puddle on the track to keep his rain tires cool.

That said, once everybody has rain tires on and you're racing in the rain, it's basically an exercise of watching follow the leader. Nobody really can pass in the rain, unless your last name is Schumacher or Senna.
 
Ive seen those races Kevin...when to pit...when to take them off...kind of neat. I like anything that adds an element of strategy.
 
KevinWI said:
That said, once everybody has rain tires on and you're racing in the rain, it's basically an exercise of watching follow the leader. Nobody really can pass in the rain, unless your last name is Schumacher or Senna.
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Brazil 2012, Canada 2011?
 
my suggestion before you get too excited about rain racing is to watch it the last time they did it. Rain slows the cars down so much they really don't even look like they are racing. The speeds look SOO slow compared to what you are used to seeing. goodyear had a bunch of rain tires that had been stockpiled for years. I think they wanted to get rid of them, so they tried it a couple times in the NW series. I don't even think goodyear has anymore rain tires.
 
Rain is the greatest equalizer in racing. Since everyone's car has more performance than it can use in the rain, it comes down to how skilled a driver is. Nascar was ready to race in the rain on road courses. Ovals don't have good enough drainage to race on them. The reason cup cars don't race in the rain is because the only time it rained, the crews didn't think it would rain that weekend so they didn't put wipers and defrosters on the cars. So Nascar decided not to embarrass themselves by making drivers that couldn't see where they were going race. They learned this from the Nationwide series. Do you remember Carl Edwards getting a rag from his pit crew so he could wipe the inside of the windshield when it fogged up? Anyone can drive those cars in the rain. (I'm talking about cup drivers here, not anybody.) It's just a question of how fast they want to go. The drivers have little to no experience driving in the rain. I think they need to get some. They are supposed to be the best drivers in the world aren't they? There is no reason why cup drivers can't race in the rain. By the way, F-1 does not currently use traction controll.
 
ted@economy said:
Why does Nascar bother to clean up oil dropped on the track after a wreck or an engine blows up. Just let them race through it and show us how skilled they are .:)
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Or, maybe they could create the Anti-AirTitan and randomly blow water onto the track to produce excitement on otherwise sunny days. Fan comfort and driver skills on display. Best of both worlds. :D
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
Or, maybe they could create the Anti-AirTitan and randomly blow water onto the track to produce excitement on otherwise sunny days. Fan comfort and driver skills on display. Best of both worlds. :D
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Don't they already have a sport for that ? Drifting ? Maybe just racing on a dry tack would be like ..well...racing. :)
 
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