2014 NASCAR at Texas Motor Speedway: Rain remains in Sunday’s weather forecast

The forecast for the rest of the weekend at Texas Motor Speedway remains unchanged. It will be mostly cloudy Saturday with a chance of an isolated shower or storm. While I think they can get both Sprint Cup practice and qualifying in, one stray shower or storm could be a problem. Likelihood of on track activities getting in Saturday are about 75 percent.

Sunday, on the other hand, remains a challenge to forecast. While it looks wet with wide spread rain showers and even isolated storms, there could be small windows. There is definitely a possibility see long stretches of rain delays during the afternoon. Odds of us racing during the afternoon at scheduled time is around 30 percent.

The threat of rain begins to decrease as we head into the evening hours of Sunday. If rain prevents the start of the race or creates long red flag situation (which I think is very possible) then the odds of racing at night look a lot better than racing during the day. I’d say the odds of finishing under the lights at Texas Motor Speedway is about 60 percnet.

Given the trend so far this season with Daytona and Bristol, when we are at a track with lights, NASCAR has been able to finish on the scheduled day of the race, just at night. Looking at this forecast, it doesn’t look as wet as the Bristol race a couple of weeks ago. Factoring that in and the decreasing threat of rain into the evening, I think NASCAR will race Sunday, it just may finish Sunday night.