Racing isn't a fair-weather sport. It's easy to love a good summer day's lapping, sticky tires and hot tarmac rewarding good driving with plenty of grip and feedback. But when the weather turns foul, or as was the case this weekend at the Chumpcar Nashville Superspeedway, near-Biblical, the race goes on--up to a point. And that's where you find out who the real racers are.
When the race started under a torrential downpour that eventually turned into flooding and torandoes, it soon became evident that every one of the 15 teams that showed up for the event was gung-ho about putting in as much wheeltime as possible, regardless of the conditions. The leaders managed to put in over 120 laps of competitive driving before lightning and high winds made it too dangerous to continue. We had just made up a lap on the front-running car and made a pass for position on a Taurus SHO to take fourth place overall when the race was red-flagged.
It's not the way anyone wanted the day to come to a close, but with standing water throughout the garages and corner workers exposed to the elements, it was the right call. We commend Chumpcar for working as hard as they did to get the four hours of racing in despite the worst intentions of Mother Nature. They're not staying down despite losing this round to the weather--the race will be re-run in just two weeks, though many teams may not be able to return on such short notice.
We'll have a full race report on Monday, but in the mean time, here's a gallery of photos showing most of the cars and some of the rain-soaked action that took place today. Now we just need to figure out a way tow a race car behind a boat to get back down flooded I-40 to Little Rock.
