Hauler Talk: Explaining short lightning caution, other weather issues at Charlotte
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After inclement weather impacted the top three national series last weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, NASCAR addressed its decisions and policies on the latest “Hauler Talk” podcast.
NASCAR Vice President of Racing Communications Mike Forde explained why lightning strikes don’t always result in 30-minute holds. NASCAR kept a yellow flag for lightning toward the end of the Coca-Cola 600 out for only a few minutes after officials determined the storm was moving away from the region.
Forde said NASCAR race control receives text messages for lightning strikes within 20 miles of the track and typically stops races for a 30-minute hold when there’s a strike within eight miles.
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“There is a caveat there, however,” Forde said. “More often than not, the lightning is either coming toward us or kind of hovering in that eight miles. But there are times, and typically it kind of happens in the background even before it gets to eight miles, we’re on the phone with our weather partners. And if our meteorologist partners say, ‘Hey, look, the lightning did hit within eight miles, however, it is moving away from the race track. There is no danger to any of the fans in the stands, the officials on the ground, the crew members, the television partners,’ then we can continue racing.”
Forde said NASCAR threw the yellow during that conversation with the meteorological experts.
“Better safe than sorry,” he said. “After a pretty quick conversation, our partners at The Weather Company said, ‘No, this is moving northwest, away from the race track. You’re not going to have to worry about this lightning strike.’ We were able to get back to green-flag racing. So, certainly a unique situation, but not a rule change for the Coca-Cola 600. It has happened before, maybe not to this extent where there was a caution, and then we immediately have gone back to green, but it has happened in the background.”
NASCAR has used the lightning hold policy since a fan died at Pocono Raceway in 2012. Forde said tweaks were made a few years ago to account for lightning moving out of the area. During their weekly Tuesday debrief, NASCAR officials discussed whether there were better ways to walk the line between throwing a caution and waiting to assess the situation.
After weather delayed the Craftsman Truck Series race at Charlotte from Friday night to Sunday morning, NASCAR put the race under an adverse conditions policy that made noon the race’s end time. Senior Director of Racing Communications Amanda Ellis explained during “Hauler Talk” that NASCAR based the decision on the preparation required for the pre-race ceremonies and concert before the Coca-Cola 600, which started around 6:30 p.m.
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“There are also just a lot of elements from the military side because of the significance of the weekend,” Ellis said. “And so ultimately, with everything that was in play and knowing what needed to be done, we wanted to make sure that the fans received all the things that they were essentially promised when they purchased those tickets.”
In the event of a postponement to Sunday, FOX had already agreed earlier in the week to move up the start time from 10:30 to 10 a.m. Forde said the network didn’t request a noon end time for the truck race on FS1 because the Indy 500 started at 12:45 p.m. on FOX.
“They were supportive of whatever we wanted to do,” Forde said. “They did not put their thumb on the scale.”
On Saturday night, NASCAR called the delayed O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race just past halfway after the field ran the final 18 laps under caution. Forde said that was partly because an oil cleanup after an earlier crash delayed crews from clearing the track.
“We kind of burned probably five laps during that cleanup session,” he said. “That was pretty unnecessary. We probably would have been back to green a little bit faster. When we finally got the track cleaned up and were ready to go, rain started. It was Murphy’s Law.”
Forde said a grim weather forecast over the holiday weekend demanded that NASCAR try to complete at least one race Saturday.
“We couldn’t go into Sunday with three races not complete,” he said. “We weren’t going to be able to run a tripleheader on Sunday. Running a doubleheader was kind of a tall task.”