Matti Di rolled into driver intro’s with long flowing, synthetic blonde hair. That guy has personality and lots of it. Michael Annett has flu-like symptoms and has tapped Justin Allgaier to drive for him tonight. The show opened with raindrops on the camera lens. It doesn’t appear to be raining at the moment, but there are lots of clouds in view. Jeff Gordon seems to be making another final night race at Bristol. I say seems to be due tot he fact he thought the last Bristol night race was the final one, and here he is again. So this may be the final Bristol night race for “Big Daddy” or it may be one of the final. Dale Jr is still rehabbing. I learned a few valuable things listening to Dale Jr talk about his concussion. It made me want to hear a lot more since his doctor, unlike my doctor, has given him some exercises to do, and rehab to help strengthen his brain. I’d love to have some of those, because 18 months on I’m still feeling the effects of and experiencing the symptoms of my concussion. And I still say that Jamie Cullum concert was almost worth the concussion I received – almost. I love Jamie Cullum.
They’re going to air-titan the moisture from the track before they give the command.
At 20:07 they’ve issued a lightning warning to the teams. The PRN team is expecting more weather over the track, but they say there’s blue skies in the distance, so they expect to get the race in soon. Right now though they say the dark clouds are coming their way.
I fell asleep on the Xfinity race pretty early last night so I don’t know what happened, but judging by the headlines it appears ‘It’ was up to his old tricks leading KyBu to speak some truth.
They’re clearing the grandstands right now at 20:14 using a message on Colossus – the big video monitors hanging above the middle of the track.
They were talking to Landon Cassill who did an Ironman Triathalon in Dublin, Ireland along with Trevor Bayne. Congrats Landon on an impressive achievement.
The apparently did the same thing earlier today during a pre-season NFL game when the weather did something similar.
There will be a competition caution on lap 60.
#41 Crew Chief Tony ‘Old Man’ Gibson said they have 3 guys that watch the weather radar and that’s all they do. I want that job! I’d risk being a part of Kurt ‘KuBu’ Busch’s team to have that sweet job.
They’re underway at 21:03.
Caution on lap 31 of 500 for rain at 21:12 edt.
They’ve brought the cars down pit road and covered them at 21:21.
On lap 14 the fans held up the 14 in honor of Tony Stewart’s last Bristol night race. Smoke said his car is so loose he’s having trouble keeping in where he wants it on the track so he didn’t see the tribute.
It’s raining pretty hard right now at 21:30 edt.
NASCAR says this won’t last very long though its heavy now. They still have the air-titans on the track. They said it might last 45 minutes since its about 20 miles wide/long according to Wendy Venturini on PRN.
PRN is reporting its the heaviest rain they’ve seen at Bristol this weekend and fans are starting to seek shelter at 21:43 edt. PRN is turning the broadcast over to local stations until 10:30pm edt. We’re under a red flag on lap 38.
The air titans have been stopped for now 21:46 edt.
Matt DiBenedetto was saying he and his wife were planning to do a planned dance routine they’d prepared that was their first dance song.  During the rain delay they actually did the dance to Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off – they actually sang the songs while doing their choreographed dance. It was cute.
The air-titans and jet dryers are back on the track and people are standing around in the infield and it looks like the rain has stopped for now 22:21 edt.
Biffle says it looks like there’s a little more rain coming, but he believes there’s a window to possibly get the race in at 22:27 edt.
Drivers have been told to return to their cars at 22:30 edt. PRN says the rain stopped about 20 minutes ago.
22:42 They’ve fired the engines.
The red flag was one hour and twenty four minutes for rain.
22:52 The rain has started again. The pace car driver said they’ve already lost turn two and they’re going to lose the rest of the track again. They’ve stopped the jet dryers again, just as they’d gotten the track dry.
PRN is saying this is the biggest rain they’ve seen today. The cars have been directed down pit road again and are stopped, but not yet covered. Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott have umbrellas extended out of their window. 22:54 the red flag have waved. Car covers are out and teams are brining umbrellas to their drivers. The rain is lighter again.
PRN is turning it over to local stations for an hour and will be back at midnight for an update. (23:00 edt). TV has gone to Scan All Watkins Glen.  The PRN guys said it appeared the tv folks were having a lunch break at 22:30, all except Petty Kyle whom they said they didn’t know where he’d gone.
Looks like tv broadcast went back live. They’re going to have coverage of the last night’s Xfinity race after a commercial break apparently.
23:24 the race has been called with 48 laps completed. The race will resume tomorrow afternoon at 1pm edt airing on CNBC.
It’s raining in Bristol at 13:00 Sunday. The air-titans are sitting waiting for the rain to stop. PRN says they will be back on at 15:00 EDT. PRN will be back at 16:00 EDT with a weather update. The air-titans are still not moving.
PRN says it stopped raining about 15:30 and the air-titans are doing their thing. The radar currently looks good. There’s still a good bit of track drying to do. They will be back on the air in thirty minutes.
The engines have been re-fired at 16:31 EDT.
Competition caution is scheduled for lap 75.
The sun is now shining as the cars roll around under caution.
Wendy says they think the rosin has been washed away from the lower groove and likely won’t have much effect today. They laid down 18 -24 inches of rosin and added rubber to it to try to give grip to the lower groove and improve the racing.
Competition caution now moved to lap 85.
They will restart racing on lap 59 of 500.
Competition caution is out on lap 85 16:50 EDT.
There’s a theory that if the rosin gets some heat in it it will be re-activated and the stickiness will provide grip so the drivers are encouraged to get their left sides on that area.
Jeff Gordon says he can be at the track on Sunday but not before Sunday.
Caution on lap 157 for Regan smith getting into the wall.
I have to believe NBC decided NASCAR nation has a much larger television than mine and that’s why they’re constantly making things really small or splitting the screen into smaller parts. I can’t tell what’s happening in the race when the screen goes small, or the camera angle goes really high. And then there’s the whole fiasco of the stupid shots inside the car for really long times while they babble on about some gearhead fascination which precludes my watching what’s actually happening on the freakin’ track! Yesterday we were stuck looking at a bleeding red light on Darrell Wallace Jr’s dashboard while he ran into the wall. It took a while for us to see a replay of him hitting the wall and who knows what else was happening on the track while we were staring at one driver’s dashboard light. How incredibly useless is that? I’m terribly frustrated by the crap NBC coverage. The guys in the booth talk a lot, about not much, and miss a lot about the race. The desk crew is the bottom of the barrel in regard to talent. Kyle Petty proves a surname trumps talent and personality. America, land of the bottom-line, home of the cheap.
Back to PRN.
Caution on lap 254 for debris. Unfortunately I don’t hear audio on goprn.com for no apparent reason so I’m stuck with tv audio.
Caution on lap 308 of 500 for a spin by ‘Kutey’ Kyle Larson.
KyBu says something broke in his car and he’s going to have to go behind the wall. He’s currently in second position. The crew told him to hold on to it while they get ready for him to come behind the wall.
Kyle ‘KyBu’ Busch loses the car on lap 358. Martin Truex Jr and ‘Kutey’ Kyle Larson and Justin ‘Dewy Alligator’ Allgaier got collected. Kyle spun and Dewey had nowhere to go and swiped Kyle then went into Truex who was checked up and rear-ended by Kutey Kyle.
Kyle was apparently trying to get to pit road when the car spun out. He said he’s tired of losing the race at Bristol due to parts failures. He said they’ll hear about that on Tuesday. He’s really angry at the spotter and driver of the 46 for running into him. He said he’d been wrecking for half a lap and they came in and cleaned him out. On the radio interview he said the spotter and the driver of the 46 need to be fired. Someone on the radio said the other teams might be angry at the 18 for not pitting when he knew he was having that kind of trouble with the car.
Truex got a lot of damage in the incident.
It seemed the caution was delayed in coming out, which might have contributed to some of the cars not getting slowed down in a timely manner. I saw KyBu sitting sideways on the track, but the caution was not displayed on NBC’s broadcast. Don’t know if NBC was slow or if NASCAR was slow throwing the yellow.
Dewy said he tried to go below KyBu then he saw Kyle was still coming down the track and he tried to go up around him and couldn’t miss him.
Caution on lap 373 for Brad ‘It’ Keselowski, KuBu, Ryan Blaney, Kenseth, Paul Menard, and Kutey Kyle in a wreck. Joey ‘Squinty Douchey’ Logano got into the back of KuBu turning him in front of his teammate ‘It’.  Blaney tried to check up, looks like Chase Elliott got into him. Blaney hit Kenseth who’d turned sideways in front him. Jimmie Johnson checked up and Kenseth hit the back of him then turned and Austin Dillon seemed to get a little of that Chase hit Ryan Blaney when Kenseth turned. Jeff Gordon apparently got some damage in that one as well.
Caution on lap 416 of 500 for Clint Bowyer visiting the wall and continuing on slowly along the wall.
Caution is out for rain on lap 434 of 500. PRN is reporting a dark cloud over the track.
The cars have been brought down pit road on lap 445 of 500 putting the race under a red flag. NASCAR is sending the jet-dryers out to the track. The drivers were told to stay in their cars.
The cars have headed back on the track on lap 446. They will drop the green flag on lap 449.
Happy Harvick wins.
KHarv wants Smoke to ride with him on the victory lap. Smoke it telling Happy to go ahead and Happy is telling Smoke to go ahead, but he wants to share it with the boss.
They’re doing double burnouts! That’s so cool of KHarv to ask and for them to do. Then they stopped with their cars facing each other. Kevin picks up the checkered flag then goes over and chats with Smoke. Very nice tribute to Smoke on his final – possibly – Bristol race.
Congrats to Ricky Stenhouse on a second place finish in the Bryan Clauson tribute car and also to Chris Buescher on a fifth place finish.
Unofficial finishing order:
Harvick, Stenhouse, Hamlin, Dillon, Buescher, Edwards, Johnson, McMurray, Allmendinger and Logano.
Smoke said KHarv told him to leave his car on the track, get in the 4 and go to Victory Lane with him. Smoke told him he couldn’t leave his car there on the track. He obviously appreciated the gesture/thought/sentiment though.
Ricky mentioned they’re having a Celebration of Life on Wednesday in Kokomo, Indiana for Bryan Clauson. Bryan was trying to run 200 races in the 2016 season.
NASCAR News:
- Kyle Busch after wreck: Keselowski a ‘dirty racer’.
- Hendrick: Move to ink Byron about future, not Dale Jr..
- Justin Allgaier to fill in for ailing Annett.
- Jeff Gordon won’t drive No. 88 car at Michigan.
- Kennedy Captures First Truck Win.
- RCR Eyes XFINITY Chase Berths.
- Pressure On for Roush Drivers.
- Team Penske Expanding XFINITY Program.
- Hornish Nabs Mid-Ohio Pole.
- Marks Wins at Mid-Ohio.
- Wallace to Run Martin Tribute Scheme.
- Stenhouse to Honor Clauson at Bristol.
- Hendrick Signs Byron for XFINITY Series.
- Tifft Looks for Comeback.
- Bristol Victory for Austin Dillon.
- NASCAR Warns Two Sprint Cup Teams.
- Gordon Wins Knoxville Kart Race.
- Yarborough to Drive Pace Car at Darlington.
- Stewart Eyes Final Ride at Bristol.
- ISC Reflects on Passing of John R. Cooper.
- Truex Visits Michigan for Some Fishing.
- Dover Extending SAFER Barriers.
- Allgaier to Sub for Annett at Bristol.
- Hendrick Pleased With Earnhardt Jr.’s Progress.
- NASCAR Sprint Cup race stopped due to rain.
- Furniture Row Racing owner says he’s ‘fairly certain’ Erik Jones will leave team after 2017.
- Tony Stewart buys Bryan Clauson’s helmet at auction, gives it to Clauson’s fiancee.
- NASCAR king Richard Petty’s 15-year-old grandson wins his first stock car race.
- Jimmie Johnson applauds William Byron signing by Hendrick Motorsports for NASCAR Xfinity Series.
- Jimmie Johnson says NASCAR should consider speed strips to improve racing.
- Rain Postpones Bristol Race.