Rain Outs stink. Knoxville Raceway has been rained out mid-afternoon the past two weeks. I can only imagine how hard it is for teams that travel from long distances like Mark Dobmeier. For years I’ve questioned the rain out decision makings like any other race fan. Why not make up a race on Sunday or the next Friday? Why not work through it all and start later, maybe race past midnight to get the show in if the forecast looks good in the evening hours? The biggest question is why the track crew is still watering the track when you can see rain coming from the western skies? The past two weeks I’ve driven by the track at 3:30pm and the Dunkin’s are still pouring on the water even though there is a blanket of storms an hour or two away to the west that you can clearly see on any radar or smartphone.
Rain outs are frustrating, and when it rains a lot there isn’t anything we can do. It stinks for the promoter as there is money lost with promotion throughout the week in radio and newspaper ads, so they’re not happy about it either. My biggest gripe about trying to squeeze in shows with rain is with the infield and a better way to get vehicles across and out of the track. When Knoxville decided to put concrete in the infield, I was blown away when it was laid down. I figured where the concrete is now would have remained dirt, and where the dirt is would have been concrete. It didn’t make sense to me. I was expecting something similar to Eldora Speedway. Earl Baltes put in concrete push off lanes in Eldora at least 20 years ago, and he even watered it to keep the dust down. So don’t tell me you can’t push off sprint cars on wet concrete, because it’s been done for years.
A couple of years ago we had some rain before one of the Nationals qualifying nights and we started late. It took less than an hour to get the track redone, but it took over 2 hours to work the infield so we could push off cars. So why not have concrete push off lanes so that we never have to worry about the push trucks having to roll in the infield ever again. And if you want to get the concrete dry, well I’m sure it’s easier drying concrete than dirt. But at least one concrete push off lane would save a lot of time and probably some weekly shows. And maybe we could find a way to get cars pitted outside the track in the barns and push off from there.
Other than going through the expense and trouble of building a tunnel to get trucks out of the infield, surely there has to be a way to have some sort of bridge laid over the track to one of the pit gates so that trailers can get in and out easier. Not sure what that is, because no matter what you lay down it’s going to want to sink in mud, but some sort of wooden bridge or maybe some precast concrete slabs that could be put in place.
There will be an official rainout policy in writing this year for the Knoxville Nationals. John McCoy is close to having that finalized, but at least now we will have a clear plan for every scenario when there is rain during that week. I really hope it doesn’t rain that week. I want to see how the new Friday format works out under normal conditions, not on a Saturday afternoon.
I am grateful for the new rain out text message feature that Knoxville and some other tracks are now using. To get a notification on my phone is very nice. You can sign up easily by texting the word “Knoxville” to 84483. But it’s also on Facebook and Twitter quickly.
I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining too much here, and I know Knoxville Raceway does try hard to get these shows in. But when the deciding factor to have a show or not is because you can’t push off cars or get trailers in and out of the track, something doesn’t seem right.
Pray for dry weather this weekend. Why can’t it just rain on Monday’s? Everyone hates Monday anyway.
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