Rain forces Richmond Cup race to move to Sunday

RICHMOND, Va. -- After a 12-lap "false start," rain that threatened Richmond International Raceway all day Saturday finally postponed the Crown Royal presents the Jim Stewart 400 to Sunday at 1:15 p.m. ET.

Though the race was started under the green and yellow flags, the event will run 400 laps when it resumes.

The decision to postpone was made about 8:45 p.m. ET, just under an hour after a red flag was displayed and the field was brought to pit road before Richmond's 31st consecutive sellout crowd, numbering more than 112,000.

The 10th event of the Nextel Cup season, rather than being run under the lights at the .750-mile oval, will be the first race run in daylight at Richmond since May 2002.

That was also the last Richmond race postponed due to weather. That year's Cup champion, Tony Stewart won that Sunday afternoon.

Sunday's race will be telecast live on FOX at 1 p.m. and broadcast live on the affiliate networks of MRN Radio.

After several hours of track drying efforts under sodden skies, the race began about 7:45 p.m.

The 43-car field made 12 laps, but the last straw, which led to the red flag, came after Scott Riggs nearly spun his No. 10 Dodge into the inside wall while circulating under caution in third place.

"It was pretty wet," Riggs said. "You could see the windshield being covered with water and rain. I goosed the throttle a little too much and almost did what I once did in Texas, when I actually spun my truck out under similar conditions.

"I know all the fans and the drivers and the teams -- we wanted to get it in tonight under the lights."

Defending Nextel Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who's winless in 10 Richmond starts, welcomed the red flag.

"It was about the same [when the red flew] as when we rolled off pit road," Johnson said. "They asked me if we were good to go [green]. I said I can't really tell because there's too much water on my windshield.

"We did the right thing by parking it."

It is the first race interrupted by weather this season. Richmond has a 2 a.m. curfew for racing and track drying would have taken several hours. After the red flag, the rain intensified and held as a steady downpour until the event was finally postponed.

An impromptu poll indicated a divergence of opinion among the drivers sidelined on pit road.

"This is absolutely a worse-case scenario, because what's probably the worst is we didn't get one lap of green," former Richmond Busch race winner Greg Biffle said. "If we'd have gotten 10 laps or five, or if we would have gone green and ran four laps I'd be a lot happier just to know what you have because I think we've got a good car.

"We just didn't get the grip we wanted in qualifying, so I think we're gonna be good but it's so frustrating. It was like, 'We're going green,' so I pulled my belts down and it just didn't happen. Oh well, there's nothing you can do."

Biffle's Roush Fenway Racing teammate David Ragan said "possibly a tornado or a hurricane, I guess, is the only thing worse than rain at a racetrack." Ragan said he saw no problem in resuming Sunday.

"It's gonna matter some, but I'm sure it's not gonna be sunny and 80 degrees," Ragan said. "It will probably be cloudy and somewhat the same conditions, but you'll just have to take it easy at the start.

"I know some guys it might suit their cars better than others. I don't know what it will do to ours, but we'll have to do what everybody else does and see what happens."