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Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

When the rain at Richmond stopped Friday evening, and when Tropical Storm Hanna made a swift passage through the city on Saturday afternoon, you knew the second-guessing would accompany the unexpected blue sky.

In the garage Sunday morning, if I heard the following complaint once, I heard it 20 times: “We could have run the Nationwide race Friday and the Cup race on Saturday.”

Instead, with rain falling Friday afternoon, and with Tropical Storm Hanna making a beeline toward the Carolinas and Virginia with an ETA in Richmond on Saturday, NASCAR chose to postpone Friday’s scheduled Nationwide Series race and Saturday night’s scheduled regular-season finale in the Sprint Cup Series until Sunday.

It was not a decision the sanctioning body made lightly. Throughout its history, NASCAR has attempted to run each of its races at the appointed time, and, barring that, at the earliest possible opportunity thereafter.

Seemingly, Mother Nature mocked the decision to reschedule the races. A few hours after cars were loaded onto their transporters on Friday, the rain stopped. A day later, Hanna raced through Richmond at breakneck speed, preferring to cause problems for the U.S. Open tennis championship in New York, rather than continuing to drench the asphalt at Richmond International Raceway.

Between approximately 4 p.m. and midnight Saturday, we enjoyed glorious weather in Richmond–with no race to watch.

Nevertheless, NASCAR, in concert with the racetrack, absolutely made the right call in postponing the two events. With state, local and city governments preparing for a worst-case scenario, NASCAR should be commended for doing the same.

Sure, the weather cleared Saturday afternoon. Before it did, however, the rain was falling sideways, whipped by wind gusts that exceeded 40 mph, according to local weather reports. To have run the race Saturday night as scheduled would have brought race fans slogging through the mud in the worst of the weather, and it would have narrowed the window for race preparation to an unmanageable degree.

Ultimately, NASCAR weighed the potential devastation of Hanna against a forecast of good weather on Sunday and made the call in the interest of the safety of all concerned.

“We just felt it was the right thing to do,” said Jim Hunter, NASCAR’s vice president of corporate communications.

It was.

Not so charitable was the decision of Richmond International Raceway officials to clear the house after Sunday’s Cup race and restrict the rescheduled Nationwide event to those fans who had purchased tickets for the event. The result was a small crowd for the second half of the doubleheader, with grandstands in Turn 2, the entire backstretch and Turn 3 all but empty.

With the rain delay having disrupted weekend plans, why not give all Cup ticket holders the opportunity to stay for the Nationwide race at no charge?

Yes, there would have been issues with duplicated seats on the frontstretch, and there might have been some grousing from those who had already paid, but the Cup fans could have moved to the empty grandstands rather than being forced to leave the track and buy tickets for the Nationwide race.

RIR officials considered the idea but felt that allowing Cup ticket holders to attend the Nationwide event free of charge would devalue the tickets of fans who had already purchased admission to the Sunday night race.

The trade-off was losing a valuable public-relations opportunity. In rewarding fans who incurred an extra day’s expenses to stay for the weather-delayed events, the good will would have outweighed any potential complaints.

No hat in the ring for Gibbs

A speech at one of the major political party’s nominating convention usually serves as a springboard for the political aspirations of the speaker. NASCAR team owner and former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, however, says not to read anything into his address to the Republican Convention in Minnesota last week.

“I’ve got enough problems–I don’t want to get into that war,” Gibbs said Sunday at Richmond. “That would be a wild one.”

So, no Senator Gibbs? Or Governor Gibbs?

“I probably wouldn’t get three votes,” he said. “That one you won’t have to worry about. Those guys are pros, and I don’t think I could help with that one.”