This stretch of four races, from Richmond last Saturday to Lowe’s on Memorial Day weekend, constitutes the longest streak of night races on the schedule. There are clusters in other places — Daytona and Chicagoland along with Bristol, California and Richmond in the fall — but none reaches an entire month, as May’s schedule does. (That’s Phoenix pictured at right.)
Other pro sports do swings all the time. West coast baseball teams come east for a week or longer at a time, and vice versa. The PGA Tour’s Western Swing took a month and a half, visiting La Quinta, Calif.; Torrey Pines in San Diego; TPC Scottsdale; Pebble Beach; Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif.; then a stop in Mexico and off to Marana, Ariz.
So it should be no surprise that NASCAR has a swing of its own. The only question is why it happens in May.
Likely, it’s just a product of schedules — NASCAR’s own and the wishes of television execs. But it seems a night swing would be better served in June or July, giving drivers a break from the brutal summer sun (and, here in the east, the oppressive humidity).
Certainly there are infrastructure issues that would make it well nigh impossible. Of the tracks that host races in June and July, only Daytona is really equipped to host a night race. And it does.
Pocono doesn’t have lights. Neither does Infineon. That pretty much puts the brakes on any sort of night racing, unless teams are willing to replace those decals with actual working lights. Which they’re probably not.
So putting a night swing in the middle of summer would require a vast revamping of the schedule, which simply won’t happen. You’d have to find dates for all of the Northeast tracks (Pocono, Dover, New Hampshire) and the only place they can go is back, since the spring weather can be notoriously fickle. Remember the CART race in 2000 in now-defunct Nazareth? The race date was in early May and the event got snowed out. (I’ll never forget that time, since the snow happened only days before my grandmother passed away.)
• SPEAKING OF FICKLENESS, I stumbled upon a cool video over at YouTube; it’s Kevin Harvick during last year’s fall Talladega race.
In less than five laps, Harvick goes from being one of the many to one of the leaders — second place, in fact.
And as quickly as it comes, it’s gone. Soon he and Robby Gordon (I’m pretty sure it’s Gordon in front of him) are under attack from the low and high grooves and they blend back into the pack.
Fascinating viewing. And it’s easy to see why spotters get worn out at that track too.
(Photo by Ronald Martenez/pool photo via Associated Press)
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The Sprint Cup’s night swing is fully underway; the next three events will all be under the lights.
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