[UPDATE]: NASCAR has postponed both the United Rentals 300 and the Daytona 500 to Monday. The United Rentals 300 will start at 11 a.m. ET on FS1, and the Daytona 500 will start at 4:30 p.m. on FOX.
NASCAR Cup Series cars were scheduled to be on track Saturday morning for the final practice session ahead of Sunday’s Daytona 500, ahead of the Xfinity Series United Rentals 300, but persistent rain in the forecast is threatening to wreak havoc on the weekend schedule.
NASCAR moved up the ARCA race to Friday night, a very wise move, as the forecast is calling for more than 24 consecutive hours of rain at Daytona International Speedway.
According to Weather.com, there’s a mere 78 percent chance of rain when practice was originally scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. ET. From there, the chance of rain every hour doesn’t dip below the 80 percent mark until 8:00 p.m. ET on Sunday. By 2 a.m. ET Monday morning, Daytona will still have above a 50 percent chance of rain.
What does that mean for the Daytona 500 and the Xfinity Series? It’s looking incredibly unlikely that we will see cars on track at all this weekend, leading to a potential Monday double-header. Given that it would take track crews multiple hours to dry the track, there is a negligible chance for any sort of a racing window, let alone one that would allow either race to reach halfway.
It will still be raining in Daytona on Monday morning, but rain is expected to taper off by the afternoon.
In what would be an absolute worst-case scenario, the forecast calls for a perfectly sunny Tuesday. Let’s hope we’re not waiting until then for the green flag to fly.