Give us some of the factors that led to the decision tonight to call (the Coca-Cola 600) at 414 miles: Mike Helton, NASCAR president: “Well, what we’re faced with right now… It’s 9:30pm/et, and based on the experience we had Friday, which took us a little over four hours to get the track dried under pretty hazy conditions and everything and tonight without any sun, the conditions, more weather on its way, the grounds around here have been annihilated all day long with rain and everything for fans and the policemen to help get the traffic out. If we’d had no rain the rest of the night — although there’s more forecasted — it would take us at least three hours, and that’s 12:30am/et getting started back. Enough’s enough, and we would have loved to have gotten all 600 miles in and had a great race at the finish, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out right.(from a Q&A at FoxSports )(5-26-2003)
