Open Race Thread: NASCAR Sprint Cup Sprint Cup Series Quicken Loans 400 | Michigan International Speedway

Happy Father’s Day to all you Dads out there! Best thing I got today was a homemade card from my kids that was NASCAR themed - made my day let me tell you!

But I don’t think my cheeriness is going to carry over to Mother Nature (I hear she hates Father’s Day) because it looks like today’s race might get rained on, and when it rains in Michigan, it rains! Trust me, MIS is my home track, I know from personal experience that when it calls for rain in that part of the world, it will rain and right now there an 80% chance of rain for this morning and a 90% chance of rain this afternoon which means there is a 100% chance that this race will not run in its entirety today.

In a way this makes me happy because I was really regretting not going to the race this weekend, but now I’m a little more happy with my choice of staying home and getting caught up on some work and hanging with my kids.

If the race does get off on time, or even at all, the tire situation might be a little more pronounced because the rain that is predicted for this morning should wash the track clean making it a green track with a newer compound tire.

Can you say competition caution on lap 20?

After the Nationwide race yesterday the Cup teams were allowed to practice with the newer left tires that Goodyear and NASCAR brought in to slow the cars down as they were running well over 200 mph going into the corners during practice and qualifying.

The practice produced the results that NASCAR wanted as the newer tire lowered lap speeds by about 10 mph on average.

But I’m wondering if that 10 mph reduction in lap speeds is really accurate. You see, these race teams build their motors to run a certain distance. This distance takes into account the amount of practice laps, qualifying, and of course race distance, so to throw another practice session in there might mess up the engine ‘life’ for some of these teams that are running a little closer to the edge than some of the others. It makes me wonder if a lot of these teams were not running their cars as hard during this unexpected practice session to help save their motors, thus lowering the lap speeds by their own doing and not because of the tire itself.

None-the-less what is done is done and we’ll see the result today during the race if the weather cooperates.

All I can say is that if I’m an engine builder and I was worried about this extra practice session putting strain on my motor(s) then I’m hoping for a rain shortened event today!

Starting line-up after the jump, see you in the comments section - I’ll be in and out during the race, having a big BBQ for the Dads in the family (weather permitting of course).