Fontana: Now It's Just Plain Weird, So I'm Staying
OK, the situation:
The rain came back at about 6 p.m. Fairly serious rain. So they red-flagged the race after 87 laps.
Which would have been enough for all of us, except for this: The race isn't official until 126 laps -- more than halfway.
Once the rain doused the track ... we were hours away from a restart. Most of the NASCAR veterans here in the press room were predicting we were done racing. Which meant we all would have been back here tomorrow.
But no! From the moment the rain stopped, the track-drying equipment was out on the track, and now the word is that they will resume the race sometime in the next hour. And hope to go 500 miles.
And that would be very, very weird.
For one, the fans have left. There were never many here, but they're gone now. For good reason. It's been cold and wet all day. So whatever racing goes on here ... will be done in near privacy.
For another, if the race resumes at 10 p.m. ... that's 1 a.m. East Coast.
Let's suggest the Sprint Cup guys have body clocks on EDT.
That means those guys could be going around a track at midnight local time -- and 3 a.m. on their body clocks.
What kind of uproar would we have if somebody got hurt driving 200 mph at 3 a.m.???
Anyway, this isn't going to appear in much of anybody's newspaper. Unless you live in Hawaii, maybe.
But I'm not leaving now. It's a freak show, and I don't walk away from freak shows. Especially when I've been here all damn day.
And, actually, I'm rooting hard that the race resumes and gets at least to Lap 126. Because if it doesn't finish tonight, I'm back out here tomorrow, remember? I don't want that. I want this over with, and I want to see it the proof -- of a checkered flag flying.