If NASCAR doesn't learn, history sure to be repeated

The Auto Club 500 at Auto Club Speedway of Southern California -- that's a mouthful -- is finally history.

Hallelujah.

The seemingly endless nightmare that was Sunday's eventually aborted attempted running of the event impacted even those of us not forced to sit through the ordeal live and in rainsuits.

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I mean, geez, has it ever been more difficult to tape a race? Even my 8-year-old couldn't keep up with it, and usually he's my ace tape-the-race guy.

Alas, before I complain too much, I'll just stop. I wasn't assigned to cover the race live for NASCAR.COM, as we rotate the writers who attend events to keep everyone fresh.

Fresh, but not necessarily dry. Get that one, Mark Aumann and Raygan Swan?

Those pour souls and tens of thousands others sat through Sunday's never-ending nightmare on location at the track formerly known as California Speedway. Well, attendance may have dropped off to merely thousands after probably 16 to 18 hours of unsuccessfully dueling with the raindrops (as well as pre-race and post-race traffic), but you get the idea. It had to be pure misery for them.

The rest of us were trying to watch the "action" on television. Little did anyone know that aside from two spectacular and possibly unnecessary accidents that took out the likes of Denny Hamlin, Casey Mears and a pair of Juniors in Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Sam Hornish Jr., the most exciting action to watch would result from speedway workers manning circular saws (read more).

Yes, the 2008 running of the Auto Club 500, which at least was completed Monday, was a bungled mess and cost NASCAR some of the valuable momentum it had built through Speedweeks and a competitive, exciting season-opening Daytona 500 one week earlier.

But could it have been avoided? Or should this one be chalked up to Mother Nature still being in charge -- and when she decides to mess with us, there's little or nothing any of us mere earthlings can do about it?

What went wrong

You can't blame NASCAR for trying to get the Sprint Cup Series race in on Sunday. The Nationwide Series event already had been postponed from Saturday -- first to Sunday and then, as the Cup event dragged on and continued to fight weather- and track-induced delays -- to Monday. NASCAR was trying (in vain, as it turned out) to avoid running both events on the same day.

But in the long run, NASCAR tried way too hard.

To recap, the race didn't start until roughly three hours after it was scheduled to begin -- and even then, there were legitimate questions about the wisdom of giving it a go. Just 16 laps into the event, driver Denny Hamlin lost control of his No. 11 Toyota and slammed into the Turn 3 wall. (Continued)