NASCAR race at Michigan suspended by rain after 51 laps; Chase Elliott leads

Bob Pockrass

FOX NASCAR Insider

BROOKLYN, Mich. — For the second consecutive year, rain suspended the NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway with Sunday’s race set to resume at 11 a.m. ET on Monday.

The race Sunday began after a rain delay of 2 hours, 19 minutes. Drivers completed 51 of the 200 laps — if they had gotten in 100 laps, it would have been an official race — before rains returned.

The 2-mile oval in rural Michigan about 50 miles west of Detroit is a massive facility with no lights. NASCAR officials, seeing more rain in the forecast and with its pre-determined time of 8:20 p.m. ET for the race to end because of darkness, felt they didn’t have enough time to dry the track and get in an official race.

The FOX Weather forecast for the area is temperatures in the 60s and a 2 percent chance of rain on Monday. Chase Elliott will be the leader when the race resumes. Ryan Blaney won the opening stage.

It marked the second consecutive year Cup’s annual stop at Michigan was impacted by rain. Last year’s race was suspended by rain after 74 laps and completed Monday.

The race is the second Cup event this season postponed because of rain. The Daytona 500 was postponed to Monday to open the season. The preaseason Clash was run a day earlier than originally scheduled after a dire forecast of at least a couple of days of heavy rain and possible flooding for the Los Angeles area.

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.