CONCORD, N.C. — Ross Chastain took a weather-shortened win in Saturday night’s rain-delayed NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Charbroil 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. And while Chastain and his loyal fans will always remember the race due to the win, just about everyone else will likely want to push the event out of their memory.
The race got underway on time at 5 PM ET, and it looked like perhaps Mother Nature would finally cooperate with the sanctioning body and its race weekend in Concord, NC. However, the race would be red-flagged on Lap 34 due to the weather that fell from the sky.
For four hours, 21 minutes, and 59 seconds, the race remained in a holding pattern due to the inclement weather.
However, after tireless efforts, the track drying team was able to get the track surface prepared to restart the race around 10 PM ET. But there was one glaring issue persisting — a heavy fog made visibility quite limited.
Several spotters from atop the spotters stand commented in the caution laps that it would be difficult to see through the fog, but they were hopeful that the fog would lift as the cars got back up to full speed. The vortex from the cars, unfortunately, was unable to thin out the thick soup.
“It was so bad,” Chastain said of the visibility after the race.
At the conclusion of the opening Stage of the race, the fog got noticeably thicker heading into Stage 2, and that is where trouble began to brew. On Lap 52, Sheldon Creed made an error, which sent Brandon Jones spinning into Brent Crews, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate. The two drivers spun back across the track and collected Harrison Burton at the top of the track.
Connor Zilisch, who had been mired back in ninth due to pit strategy during the Stage break, asked his team what caused the crash. Zilisch’s team replied, “Spotters not being able to see,” to which Zilisch responded, “Oh nice.”
On Lap 73, a slew of cars, including Justin Allgaier, Taylor Gray, and Sheldon Creed, all randomly piled into the outside wall. Several drivers yelled on their team radios that there was oil on the track.
Prior to the drivers reaching that section of the track, Dawson Cram’s No. 35 machine seemingly blew an engine and dropped oil in the racing groove. It seemed that NASCAR Race Control was unable to spot the oil on the track in time, due to the cloud of fog. The sanctioning body would throw caution for fluid on the track.
The final 17 laps of the race were a glorified parade as the field followed the pace car around the 1.5-mile speedway. As the field crossed the finish line on Lap 90 to conclude the second Stage of Saturday night’s race, by the NASCAR Rule Book, the race became official. A lap later, with heavy mist and rain dropping on the track, NASCAR called the drivers back to pit road. After a very brief red flag, the race was called due to weather, and Chastain was awarded the win.
“Yeah, there at the end, and we lost the track quickly. Visibility was tough,” Chastain said. “I think that played — I mean, [my spotter, Brandon] McReynolds couldn’t see some safety trucks. He said, ‘I know they went in over there at Turn 2, but just watch out, I don’t know where they’re at,’ and then there was liquid down that got put down in Turn 1. Speedy dry then gets blown up into the air, and gets hung in the fog, it looked like. Yep, glad, glad, obviously, the decisions were made how they were. Visibility was bad.”
On a very emotional week for Richard Childress Racing, which suffered the tragic loss of Kyle Busch, Jesse Love and Austin Hill would record finishes of second and third on Saturday night.
William Sawalich would score a solid fourth-place finish, and he was followed across the finish line by Corey Day, the driver of the No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
Connor Zilisch, Ryan Sieg, Cole Custer, Carson Kvapil, and Rajah Caruth rounded out the top-10 finishers in the event.
With the expected weather forecast for the Charlotte Motor Speedway area on Sunday and into next week, NASCAR was already in an unenviable position heading into Saturday, as Friday night’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series North Carolina Education Lottery 200 was postponed. As Saturday progressed, the situation became even less ideal as additional rain wiped out the already postponed NASCAR Truck Series race and threatened to bump the conclusion of the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series event to another day.
In the end, NASCAR was able to click off enough caution laps to conclude the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race, and while it wasn’t a favorable decision in the minds of many people in the garage area, and likely the grandstands, running 17 caution laps on Saturday night put NASCAR in a much better position to pull off its three races during Memorial Day weekend.
