Rain in Richmond postpones Cup race
Rain washed out the NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway after 12 caution laps Saturday night, forcing officials to postpone the event until today.
Following introductions and other prerace festivities, the race began on time, but still with jet dryers on the track and the cars circling under caution.
On the 12th lap, as a light drizzle that grew stronger fell, NASCAR saw the forecasts for more rain coming true, and ordered the cars to pit road. The next time they moved was to the garage, to wait to start all over today.
It’s the first time a Nextel Cup race at Richmond has been postponed since May 2002, when the event went off the next day and Tony Stewart earned the victory.
The rainout was something of a new experience for rookie Juan Pablo Montoya, who joined NASCAR this year after racing in CART and Formula One. The latter races in the rain, and Montoya said similar conditions yielded one of his more memorable races.
“Probably the best story is when half the field in Formula One wrecked in the same corner in Brazil,” the Colombian said, guessing that the race happened in 2003. “It was raining hard, but there was like a river coming across the track.”
Drivers honor Virginia Tech
For the last three weeks, NASCAR’s Nextel Cup cars have all displayed a Virginia Tech logo with a black background in a show of support for the victims and families of the massacre that left 33 dead in Blacksburg on April 16.
On Saturday night at Richmond, in the series’ first visit to the state since Seung-Hui Cho shot 32 fellow students and faculty members at Virginia Tech before also killing himself, the decals were just a symbol, and the support was something more tangible: money.
In prerace introductions, Virginia drivers Jeff and Ward Burton, Elliott Sadler and Denny Hamlin presented Hokies football coach Frank Beamer with a check for $120,000 for the Hokies Spirit Memorial Fund. Richmond International Raceway president Doug Fritz presented him with a check for $40,000, also for the memorial fund, that he said was given by RIR and some sister tracks also owned by International Speedway Corp.
“I’ve long admired and respected what you guys do, and I come here tonight admiring and respecting and very much appreciating everything that NASCAR has done for Virginia Tech,” Beamer said during the drivers’ meeting.
Crash claims second victim
A second person has died following a crash that led officials to call off the rest of the Gumball 3000 rally, and a British driver blamed for the accident was stopped trying to leave the country.
Hospital officials in Skopje, Macedonia, said that the wife of a man killed in the accident also had died. Vladimir and Margarita Cepuljoski, an elderly couple, were critically injured in Wednesday’s accident in Struga, about 120 miles from Skopje.
Nicholas Morley was charged with endangering traffic and abandoning an accident victim. He was released from custody in the southern town of Ohrid late Friday after posting bail of $33,900. Authorities said they stopped Morley at an airport hours later as he was prepared to board a private jet.