The 24 hours of Lowe’s Motor Speedway

May 26, 3:41 AMDetroit NASCAR ExaminerJosh Lobdell

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Once again rain ruins one of the Crown Jewels of the Sprint Cup season GettyImages/Scott Halleran

I had no idea what I was in for when I sat down Sunday afternoon to watch the Coke 600 from Lowe’s Motor Speedway. In the end it was another sad display that highlights the stereotypes of NASCAR, and more importantly the reason why fans are not watching this sport on TV.

Think about it like this, the Coke 600 became another sad display of NASCAR racing. Much the same thing happened last February in Daytona, and I think we all remember the debacle held last summer in Indianapolis.

All three of these races share another thing in common, they are the Crown Jewels of the NASCAR schedule and now three of them in a row have turned into a complete joke.

In the view of many sport fans we have an illegitimate Daytona 500 champion, and now many will look down upon David Reutiman’s first career victory, worse than all of that though the rains at Lowe’s Motor Speedway seemed to confirm the stereotype of NASCAR held by many.

The general sport fan thinks NASCAR is a sport that just drags on and on. Thanks to the rain that perception of NASCAR was confirmed this weekend. Two races this weekend were stopped short due to rain, one of them a Crown Jewel of the NASCAR season.

To be perfectly blunt this race had no business being started Monday. NASCAR likes to say they will not green flag a race unless they feel that the entire distance can be run. This is where the secretiveness of the NASCAR officials works against them. The forecast for today in Charlotte called for only a 40% chance of sunshine. Meaning there was a better than 50% chance there was going to be some rain. There was literally no chance 600 miles were going to be fit between the rain drops Monday. Why pretend other wise?

Had NASCAR come out and said, “We re going to run as much of this race as we can.” Then the fans would come back to the track, tune back into the TV program and watch whatever amount of racing the rains would allow. This constant starting and stopping of the race to dry the track makes for poor TV, and THAT IS WHY PEOPLE TUNE IT OUT!

Think about it like this, how many TV channels do you have? Is there a need to watch emergency vehicles endlessly circle the track? This is my job and even I had had enough. Even I tuned out, that is not a good sign. What about the peripheral NASCAR fans that only tunes into the big races each year. That fan has no had three bad big races in a row. What do you think his opinion of racing is? Do you think they will be tuning in for Dover, or Pocono, or Michigan in the coming weeks? No of course not by delaying the race so many times NASCAR probably cost it self some fans on a weekend designed to win some.

I don’t need or want to see David Reutiman praying for rain for an hour. I don’t need to see an endless parade of safety vehicles circling the track in a vain attempt to dry it out. Look into the stands everyone is gone, look at the 15 minute breakdown of the ratings everyone turned the channel. Nobody wants to watch this sad display.

There comes a point when NASCAR will have to schedule in rain dates on the schedule, especially for their Crown Jewel Events. The Daytona 500, Coke 600, Brickyard 400, and maybe the Southern 500 at Darlington are races that should not end due to rain. Period.