LOUDON, N.H. – Mother Nature always has the upperhand in outdoor sporting events. But NASCAR called an audible during Sunday’s USA Today 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and it paid off in a big way.
NASCAR battled the weather all weekend long in New Hampshire. Xfinity Series practice and qualifying was canceled on Friday. Cup Series qualifying was canceled on Saturday, and teams only had a few minutes of practice, which likely wasn’t enough to point them in the right direction. NASCAR began the Xfinity Series’ SciAps 200 on wet-weather tires on a damp race track. Quickly, it dried up.
Sunday provided a bigger challenge. All week long, the forecast wasn’t ideal, triggering NASCAR to move the start of the race up by a half hour. Pop-up rain showers could hit the track at any time. In a rather clean opening stage, the coveted halfway point – declaring the race official – was rapidly approaching. So was the rain.
After Kyle Busch spun for a second time on Lap 217, the skies opened up, letting out a heavy drizzle. NASCAR sent the cars to pit road. Not long after, a severe thunderstorm pelted the track, and Tyler Reddick was scored as the leader. With a tornado warning south of the track, it wouldn’t have been surprising to see NASCAR pull the plug after the red flag on Lap 219, well past the halfway mark.
But NASCAR had wet-weather tires in its back pocket, giving the sanctioning body hope that the race could be resumed. Action was stopped for two hours and 14 minutes, but when the last major cell dissolved and the sky cleared, drivers were called to their cars at 6:43 p.m. to run the final 82 – turned out to be 86 – laps.
If it wasn’t for the wet-weather tires, NASCAR would have called the race when the red flag waved.
“We would have been done with 82 laps to go,” Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s SVP of competition, said. “It gave us an opportunity to get back green. We were up against daylight as well. Kudos to our teams, our drivers, our owners and especially Mr. [Jim] France for his vision.”
It was evident that once the race resumed, drivers with dirt-racing experience cycled to the front. Christopher Bell gained positions at a rapid pace, as he was slotted in ninth position during the red flag. He passed Tyler Reddick for the lead on Lap 242 and never looked back en route to his third win of the 2024 season and second career victory at New Hampshire.
“For NASCAR to run in the rain like that – or not in the rain, but run in the damp conditions on an oval – it ended up being hopefully a good show,” Bell said. “ I had a blast. It made it different.
“Hopefully that was entertaining because it was something different, something new, and nobody knew what to expect and what to do. The guys that figured it out the quickest were the most successful.”
When the race resumed, drivers were tiptoeing around the “Magic Mile.” The heat in the tires and the track drying quickly wore out the tires. NASCAR called for non-competitive pit stops multiple times because of a soaked pit road, so crew members wouldn’t be in harm’s way.
“One big thing I think was the noncompetitive pit stops just to keep the pit crews out of danger,” Adam Stevens, crew chief of the No. 20 Toyota, said. “They didn’t have time to dry pit road. It was very, very wet. Not only is that a slip-and-fall hazard, but you can have a pit crew guy on the ground on the right side of the car and then the car slipping and sliding trying to beat each other out of their boxes. It could get really, really messy in a hurry.
“I think in this situation that was absolutely the right call as well.”
More than not, drivers had fun. Some remain skeptics, despite getting in the full race. There were six cautions in the wet conditions, one involving Bubba Wallace, which dropped him below the elimination line.
Add Kyle Larson to the drivers who had fun. He was driving the car on the edge, but noted that there was still grip in the race track, allowing drivers to attack the corners. He wouldn’t even mind driving on a surface that is wetter if it means spending more time preparing pit road for the pit crews.
“I feel like going forward we should try to spend less time trying to dry the track and more time trying to dry pit road, that way we can have competitive stops, add some strategy to it,” Larson said. “I think that would add to a way more interesting race and probably a different winner a lot of the time, not just your dominant teams.”
Josh Berry tied the best finish of his rookie season in third. And though he doesn’t have experience in the rain, his short-track roots gave him an edge.
“The cream rose to the top when it got wet,” he said. “I’ve raced on worn out tracks my whole life and when it gets slick like that, you look around for grip and I guess I’m pretty decent at it.”
Chris Buescher rounded out the top five, scoring his first top-10 finish in 11 New Hampshire starts. He wasn’t the biggest fan of racing in the wet, but was happy the full distance got in.
“Ultimately, we got the whole race in so that’s good,” he said. “It takes a normal race and throws a gimmick at it in a way. It’s something we don’t do very often and when we’re this competitive and trying to split hairs to get one point here or there, trying to figure out how to get wins, you throw something like this and it could shift the field dramatically quick.”
Waiting out the weather was a risk NASCAR decided to make and it paid off in big ways. The only time the Cup Series had previously raced in wet-weather tires on an oval was during the 2023 All-Star qualifying heats and earlier this season at Richmond Raceway, which produced a compelling opening stint of that event. New Hampshire has higher speeds than those two venues, adding a new element.
Moving forward, NASCAR will continue leaning on wet-weather tires in situations comparable to what transpired on Sunday. It will also review what happened at New Hampshire and how it could have been even better.
“Once we get back to the R&D Center, we start downloading how this race unfolded,” Sawyer stated. “If you think about it, we only have four data points. We ran the trucks at Martinsville, the All-Star Race with the Cup cars, this year at Richmond with the Cup cars and now here, which is one of the faster short ovals that we run on. We will get back and look at all the things that transpired today and if we should have got on drys.”
Overall, it was a success across the board.
Sawyer added, “Absolutely. If you go back and look at the reason why we came up with this and started working through it with our teams and the folks at the R&D Center, it was to do exactly what we did yesterday with the Xfinity race and today with the Cup race. So yes, very successful.”
The checkered flag flew just before another major rain cell hit the race track. As drivers were on the cool-down lap, it began to sprinkle. Another heavy downpour hit the “Magic Mile” minutes later.