Round two of the thirteenth annual Wild West Shootout at the F K Rod Ends Arizona Speedway was postponed on Sunday due to wet grounds. This did not come as a huge surprise to me as it had started raining fairly hard before I called it a night on Saturday night and when I arose on Sunday morning it was still raining fairly steady. It did stop soon after but there were still a few times when it would drip for a few minutes and it remained very overcast and cool as the morning progressed.
I had talked to a track official on Saturday about what the odds of them racing on Sunday were, based on the amount of rain weather experts were stating would fall. He felt that they could race but the potential trouble areas would be the pits, not the track itself.
I'm not sure if it indeed rained more than they had planned for but there was certainly an issue with the pit area and the approaches to the track. We took a spin out to the track after the program had been postponed just to see how things looked and it was a muddy mess. There would have been no way that they could have gotten the cars through the pits and run off any kind of a program. Many of the haulers are currently stuck and won't be going anywhere, even if they wanted to head out.
I'm not a believer in all the "black helicopter" theories, but I'm being to wonder if the Arizona Speedway has some kind of a jinx over it. All the years I attended this event at the U.S.A. Raceway(or whatever name it was going by at the time) in Tucson and we never got rained out a single time. If fact, I remember one night when it was misting but it was so light that they ran the whole show off while it continued to do so. This is the third year for the event at the Arizona Raceway and this is the third time that the rain has already spoiled the action.
However, I was pleased and hopeful when they made their announcement and called it a postponement and not a cancellation as that indicated that they were trying to find an avenue to still hold the race at some point. Later in day they did indeed announce what plan B would be.
They will now hold a doubleheader event next Saturday with full programs in both the afternoon and evening to go along with already scheduled events next Wednesday and Sunday. However, due to time restraints next Saturday, that program will be slightly modified with the X Mods and Mods doing timed hot laps that will set their lineups. In an attempt to speed up the afternoon program, those two classes won't run heat races and B features and will instead run double feature races. This way, both classes will still get to run six nights of racing and the good news for both classes is that everyone will make a feature that afternoon with no one left on the sidelines and all getting to run a main event. While some will not like the fact that those two races will now be started heads up by time, at least there will be a complete number of shows for those two classes rather than perhaps dropping them from the Saturday afternoon event. The Late Models, meanwhile, will run a complete and full program using their normal qualifying procedures. Then, on both Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, they will go back to their normal qualifying procedures.
It will make for a hectic time for the racers and their crews with three shows crammed in such a tight time window but that certainly beats the alternative of not getting to race at all. I'm suspecting that part of the reason they chose to run the doubleheader on Saturday was that typically the crowds are considerably larger for the weekend shows as opposed to the midweek shows and after all, the promoters are putting on this event to make themselves a few bucks(hopefully) too. They also stated that it is tough to get their track crews fully manned for midweek shows because of work commitments and that seems reasonable to me also, particularly on the short notice that this schedule change would require. And also the fact that they have moved their practice night from Tuesday to Thursday also tells me that they are afraid that things won't be dried off completely until Wednesday which would make a Tuesday night makeup a mote point.
Typically also there tend to be quite a few new entrants that show for the first time on either Wednesday or Friday night and this change might spur even more of them to come, knowing that they will get to race five of the total number of shows originally scheduled.
I give full credit to the promoters for working with the drivers an making their best attempt to make a tough situation work as smoothly as possible. Drivers pulled a long way out here to race, and they want to run as many times as they can. Fans have traveled a long way for the same reason. The promoters will likely come out better if they get the full number of shows in but this change also creates a number of headaches for them and we should all be pleased that they are willing to go through the work involved to make this all happen.
Now lets just hope for some drier weather, sunny skies and warmer temperatures. Is that too much to ask for?
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