Watch the video as most of the field wrecks in the rain at near 200mph
The NASCAR Cup Series was scheduled to race on Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway. Rain moved into the Daytona Beach area and pushed the race to Sunday morning.
Watch the NASCAR crash video below.
NASCAR dropped the green flag at 10am. However, rain was on the way.
With 23 to go, the intensity was picking up. A dark rain cloud was quickly approuching the speedway.
However, NASCAR doesn’t throw a caution for a dark cloud. Instead, they attempt to catch the rain right when it falls.
Daytona is a 2.5-mile oval. It’s difficult to monitor the entire track. To make things worse, the rain came fast with little warning.
Yet, NASCAR uses slick tires on oval tracks. With no tread, the cars aren’t built to manage even the slightest bit of water.
Just as the field entered turn three, the rain began to fall. Race leader Daniel Suarez was the first car to spin but he was far from the only one. Hamlin and Haley also spun on their own as they were the first car in their lane to touch the wet surface.
As all three of those cars spun, the rest of the field came into the scene. 10+ cars were collected in the crash.
NASCAR red flagged the race and brought the field to the pit lane. The race remains in a holding pattern.
“The previous lap, there was nothing there. What do you do? You can’t check up that fast. It was way too late to call anything,” Kyle Busch stated as he was involved in the crash.
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NASCAR comments
“We were on top of the weather, monitoring it with all of our turn spotters,” NASCAR’s Scott Miller explained.
“We had all the information that we thought. You know, we had been dodging some weather, for a little while. Nothing had hit.”
“All the sudden, there was that shower. The pace car was sitting down there on the inside, it was still dry when they wrecked.”
“If you watch the in-car, you can see that some rain definitely started right before they wrecked. But, we really couldn’t do anything about that. It’s not something that you can predict when it’s going to start raining.”
Miller added, “Just a super bad situation, for everybody.”
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Kevin Harvick thinks he should be the leader
“It was raining,” Harvick said of the crash.
“We made it through the first part of the wreck there. I saw the bottom two cars starting to come up the race track so I gassed it up. So close.”
“But, the car maintained plenty of speed. I guess you have to be subjected to, what is minimum speed? Because when the caution comes out, we are the leader.”
“I think they’re making it up as they go. It’s just one of those deals.”
Harvick was involved in the accident.
Daytona Race Results: August 28, 2022 (NASCAR Cup Series)