Yahoo Sports Rain pushes Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona to Sunday
The final July race at Daytona for the foreseeable future has been postponed.
Persistent rains Saturday caused NASCAR to push Saturday night’s Cup Series race to Sunday at 1 p.m. The forecast isn’t much better on Sunday, but maybe there will be a long enough break for the race to be run to the halfway point. There’s a better than 50 percent chance of rain for much of the day.
Joey Logano will start first whenever the race does happen.’ He starts there because Friday’s qualifying session was canceled because of, you guessed it, rain.
The second Daytona race of the Cup Series season is moving to September as the final race of the regular season in 2020. The race has been held on or near the July 4 holiday ever since its inception. But NASCAR is replacing the July 4 weekend race with Indianapolis Motor Speedway in an attempt to boost the sagging Brickyard 400 and add some end-of-season Daytona drama ahead of the playoffs.
Rain hasn’t been NASCAR’s best friend over the last few years at Daytona in the summer anyway. Yes, it’s stunning to know that summer thunderstorms happen in Florida. Aric Almirola won the rain-shortened 2014 race and the 2015 race was run late into the night and early morning hours of Sunday after a long rain delay.
Sunday’s 1 p.m. ET start time (on NBC) at least means the Cup Series race won’t be going head-to-head with the United States Women’s National Team on Sunday morning. The USWNT is set to kick off at 11 a.m. ET in France against Netherlands for the Women’s World Cup title.
It’s also the second-straight rain-delayed race for NBC to start its portion of the Cup Series schedule. Last week’s race at Chicago was delayed for over three hours by thunderstorms that hit the track just minutes after the race was stupidly started.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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