Friday, November 18, 2011

Did NASCAR Rig The Truck Series Championship Tonight?

Tonight was the finale of the Camping World truck series at Homestead Florida. The race was rather boring for most of the race- a couple of spin outs and a blown engine by Jennifer Cobb blown engine just 4 laps into the race (who did or hasn't she pissed off?).
But at the end of the race, with about 15 laps to go, it started to rain. They said heavily, but according to the weather service, it was just a light rain and it didn't look that heavy. Further, on the camera's on the trucks, you couldn't tell it was raining- there were no rain drops on the windshields. And you can have deceiving looks of rain when you look at the lights and rain. The farther away from the lights, the heavier the rain looks. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/obhistory/KHST.html The rain amount was so small, it wasn't even measured and the rain had stopped within an hour.
Johnny Sauter was leading the race and was six points out of the championship. Austin Dillion, the championship leader had just a 6 point lead over Sauter and his car was iffy. A couple laps earlier, and Dillion was actually trailing Sauter in the points race.
The race was called about 10 minutes or so after the red flag was shown and the excuse was that it would have taken about 1 1/2 hours to dry the track, thus giving the championship to Austin Dillion.
For those who don't know, Austin Dillion is the grandson of Richard Childress, who is a big time NASCAR team owner in the different levels of NASCAR.
Johnny Sauter drives for ThorSprot Racing, hardly a big name in racing.
Normally, when there is rain, even in a night race, they will wait and wait and wait. They don't wait 10 or 15 minutes and then call the race unless there was no hope of getting the race finished and that usually involves severe weather.
There was no hurry to get the race finished. It was a night race and this was the last race of the season. So, what was the big hurry to call the race? The race was called around 10:00 local time, so, it wasn't that late, especially on a Friday night. Yeah, I know, Florida is full of snowbirds and seniors who go to bed early, but these are NASCAR fans- they are going to be awake most of the weekend.
So, did NASCAR throw/rig the championship to benefit Austin Dillion and his championship instead of waiting about an hour and finish the race? My money is that NASCAR threw a huge bone to Richard Childress and gave the championship to grandson Austin Dillion. It may have not changed the outcome of the championship, but now, we will never know.

1 comment:

  1. Based on what you posted, looks awful suspect to me. Agree called the race to early could have waited till at least midnight or 1 AM.

    ReplyDelete