Insiders rip NASCAR for not moving Michigan start time despite weather threat

NASCAR had no choice but to push the remaining 149 laps of the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan to Monday after rain derailed the race Sunday.

And as a result, the race restarted at 11 a.m. ET on USA and to a crowd considerably less than the one that had showed up to the racetrack the day prior. Jeff Gluck of The Athletic, speaking on “The Teardown” podcast Monday, wondered why NASCAR didn’t elect to start the race earlier Sunday when it knew the weather forecast didn’t look promising. The race was scheduled for a 2:30 p.m. start time, but didn’t get underway until over two hours later.

At a track such as Michigan, which doesn’t have lights, trying to complete a 400-mile race in a six-hour window with rain in the forecast proved to be too much.

NASCAR insider sounds off on Michigan start time

“TV has already agreed to a policy if there’s 24 hours’ notice and people see rain coming, NASCAR has the ability to move up the start time. … We all saw the forecast all week,” Gluck said. “… I think NASCAR got to a point to where they just thought, ‘Ah, it’ll be scattered storms and there should be enough time for us to get it in and maybe don’t have to move it up a whole hour or something.’ I don’t know why that didn’t happen.

“That’s part of the thing that’s frustrating to me. Like, we have seen NASCAR go in such a TV heavy direction. And you get it because look at the money. The money has saved NASCAR essentially. Anybody that wants to be like, ‘Oh, NASCAR’s a dying sport, NASCAR’s not what it used to be,’ uh, the money would say otherwise. The money would say the TV money is more than they ever had ever. The TV money is saving the sport, propping it up year after year.

“… So, you can’t fault TV, they wanna get a return on their investment. I get that. But at some point, hasn’t it gone too far one way? Because you’re asking people to come to the track like Michigan for example, you’ve taken them down to one race, they’ve got one 400-mile race now. There’s no lights here obviously, it’s a summer race in Michigan where how many times have we seen it rain? It rains here and it’s just not fair to these people. Not everybody’s local and barely anybody’s local around here in Brooklyn, Michigan. It’s not a high population area.

“… People are driving in from a long way, they’re camping all weekend. It felt like there’s no urgency to do something like, ‘Let’s make sure we give these people a race on the day that they came.’ The stands were fantastic yesterday, the best crowd I’ve seen at Michigan in years. … I’m puzzled as to why there’s not more respect — yeah, we want the viewers. Everybody wants the viewers, great. But what about the people who are really going to the race?”

NASCAR insider explains late start time at Michigan

The late afternoon start times have come under scrutiny in recent years, and the conversation seems to come back to focus after weekends like these. TV networks primarily have the power to schedule races at the times they see fit, and the belief is that more people tune in to watch later in the day.

Those are the facts, and the main reason Gluck’s co-host, Jordan Bianchi, isn’t too fired up about it. Bianchi explained how the later start times is “how the sport survives.”

“It’s dollars and cents,” Bianchi said. “This is how NASCAR makes money. Their TV partners want later start times. This is why they’re paying all of this money is to maximize their AD rates. And later in the afternoon closer to primetime is going to get you more money. This is how the sport survives. How sports in general survive is TV money and you wanna get as many eyeballs on your product as possible. And the numbers are overwhelming that more people will watch races in mid-afternoon. 3-3:30 start times which we have seen a lot of, at that time than earlier in the day. That is indisputable. The numbers will not go against that.”