Struggling to Turn Laps at Rain-Soaked Fontana
Man, this is like pulling teeth. Some rain has fallen on the track here the past few days, particularly last night, and it's a major issue as they try to run the Auto Club 500 in Fontana.
The "weepers" we mentioned earlier have become an enormous issue. Drivers maintain that a four-car tangle on Lap 21 was a direct result of Casey Mears driving over one of the long wet spots, losing control and getting into the wall.
Mears touched the wall, came down the track and was clipped by Dale Earnhardt Jr. Sam Hornish saw the chaos developing ahead of him and clipped the back of Reed Sorenson, bending his hood and eliminating his ability to see where his car was going. Said Hornish: "After that, I was just along for the ride."
Hornish eventually slammed into the rear of Mears, getting underneath Mears and rolling him over onto his roof. Hornish's engine burst into flames, and it looked scary there for a bit before track workers got the fire put out and extricated the two drivers.
Several drivers were very unhappy that the race went off with water leaking, clearly, from the weepers.
None was more blunt that Earnhardt.
"That's a dirty old race track out there," Earnhardt said.
Asked if he were OK, after being flipped around and smacking the wall, he said, "Just frustrating."
"The track isn't ready today. Just a bad move" to try to race.
Denny Hamlin hit the wall a few laps earlier, and he was critical of race conditions, too.
"I think we can get back out there but I think there are 42 other drivers that would agree that we should not be racing on that race track right now," Hamlin said. "I hit a slick spot and my car took off. You can see it on television. Right at the seams it's seeping a lot of water.
"I hit a wet spot and I'm not going to be the last one."
Jimmie Johnson, unscathed so far, said the "weepers" are diabolical.
"It's tough to see those wet spots until you drive over the top of them," he said. "You get on that water and you lose control. ... We might be getting things under control. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of cars in the process."
So, a recap:
Today's race started 2:30 hours late as they dried the track.
It was halted for 67 minutes after the four-car wreck. So it's 5:20 p.m., and the race should have ended something like an hour ago, had it gone off on time.
And now rain is falling again, and a yellow flag has come out. It the rain keeps up ... we're in for a very long night or a very short (and probably postponed till tomorrow) race.