Darby: Showers won't stop Watkins Glen race

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- Rain will not stop Sunday's Sirius at The Glen NASCAR Winston Cup race from being completed, series director John Darby said Saturday at Watkins Glen International.

	John Darby

Darby said that a "frog-choking downpour" would force postponement of the event by exceeding the tires' capacity to deal with the water, but that a simple light rain shower would not.

Sunday's weather forecast calls for cloudy skies with a 45 percent chance of afternoon showers. Rain was falling at the beginning of Friday evening's Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series.

"This weekend, we're complete with the exception of tomorrow's race," Darby said. "If completing that portion of the weekend was dependent on using rain tires, then we would use them."

As they have since 1999, Goodyear has 1,200 rain tires on hand at WGI this weekend, or 300 sets of tires -- more than enough to outfit the 43-car field, if necessary.

"We hope it doesn't rain, but we're prepared if it does," said Rick Heinrich, Goodyear's marketing manager for stock car tires.

"You might get to a point where you just can't do anything," Darby said, "but if we were presented with the right weather situations tomorrow, other than sunny skies and a dry racetrack, we would convert to a wet weather set-up to continue racing."

Saturday afternoon, all Winston Cup qualifying and practice had been completed, but Heinrich said a handful of teams had purchased and mounted rain tires.

Per the Winston Cup entry blank for the event -- as has every blank for events here and at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., the circuit's other road course -- cars must be prepared to be equipped with "wet condition tires, a windshield rain repellant, windshield wiper(s), windshield defroster/defogger fans and a rear taillight."

Darby said if rain tires were called for, NASCAR would throw a caution and dictate that all teams would install the grooved tires that are a softer compound than regular slick tires and are designed to dissipate water with a tread pattern identical to Goodyear's Aquatread street tire.

	The Craftsman Truck Series ran a rain-soaked practice in 1999. Credit: NASCAR

He said switching back to slicks could either come under a NASCAR-mandated caution or at a team's discretion. He said installing the other required equipment would have to be done in the approximately four minutes it takes the caution car to make a lap of the 2.45-mile circuit at its 35 mph speed limit.

"We've built road course cars with windshield wipers and defoggers for years -- we've got to make plans for it," USG Pontiac crew chief Ryan Pemberton said. "If it looks like there's a threat of rain, we'll put it (rain equipment) on before the race. Maybe not the wiper itself, but everything else we would.

"We'd have to have the other stuff on board already but putting a wiper on would take just a matter of seconds to do. It would be as simple as changing a battery on pit road."

The first use of Winston Cup rain tires, which were actually hand-grooved slicks, was by Dale Earnhardt and Mark Martin in 1995 at Watkins Glen. The second Winston Cup exhibition race, at the Suzuka Circuit in Japan, featured a rain-soaked qualifying session.

The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series staged a full practice session in the rain at WGI in 1999, when current Winston Cup rookie Greg Biffle was in that series. A handful of drivers, including Terry Labonte, sample rain tires at a WGI practice in 2000.

Darby said teams not having a chance to practice on rain tires "would not carry a lot of weight" in NASCAR's decision to go to them Sunday.