Intermittent and ill-timed rain showers prevented the start of Sunday’s scheduled YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway and forced postponement of the second Playoff race in the Round of 12 until 1 p.m. ET on Monday (to be broadcast on NBCSN, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Minutes after the Cup drivers were given the command to start engines and began circling the track on pace laps, a hard rain began falling in the tri-oval at the 2.66-mile speedway and soon drenched the entire track, erasing the progress that had been made in drying the asphalt.
Without hope of completing the race before dark, NASCAR announced the postponement shortly before 4 p.m. ET. Denny Hamlin, winner of this race last year, will lead the field to green on Monday with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch beside him.
Hamlin already has clinched a spot in the Round of 8 in the Playoff by virtue of his victory last week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Greg is a published award winning sportswriter who spent 23 years combined active and active reserve military service, much of that in and around the Special Operations community.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.