[Motorsports One]

Care to share you thoughts on the Montreal "Dash through the raindrops?" I'm sure we'd all like to hear from someone who was there.

I think it was Frank Stoddard who was vocal about NASCAR not letting teams switch back and forth between rain and dry tires at will. I think NASCAR had said that would be OK, but then on race day mandated which tires were allowed at any given time. That turned out to be a non-issue since the rain never let off enough to warrant going back to dry tires.

On lap 7, when NASCAR gave the red flag for all teams to switch to rain tires, many underfunded teams just elected to park their cars. That was the case for Morgan Shepherd who had another set of dry tires in his pits, but no rain tires. I think 4 other teams parked their cars at that time, they may have run a little bit longer had the rain not come so early, but these were teams that likely would have parked early anyway.

From that point on, all the remaining teams were dealing with a lot of unknowns, having never used the rain tires and windshield wipers in actual competition. Scott Pruett's crew even had the rain tires mounted on the wrong side of the car, but thankfully realized their mistake before the car went out on the track.

Some teams elected to not use a windshield wiper, instead opting for a water repellent product such as Rain-X. Other teams using the windshield wipers probably had to improvise as their setup didn't work at higher speeds. Patrick Carpentier's wiper motor was mounted at the top of the windshield instead of the bottom, which caused the air flow on the windshield to keep the wiper motor from moving the blade down. He could only use his wiper at low-speed corners. Others had the blade simply lift off the windshield at speed or the blade totally came off the arm.

As the rain showers intensified, problems were just getting worse as fog formed on the inside of the windshields. According to his crew chief, Brian Simo started to experience the lack of visibility slightly before everybody else did. The team tried different solutions, such as applying a sheet of clear film to the inside of the windshield that would keep it from fogging up. I'm not sure how the clear film worked, but it seemed to provide Brian with a bit of a clear line of sight. The crew also tried to redirect airflow from a blower hose inside the car to act as a defroster, but by then it was too late and the race was about to be called due to pooling water on the track.

The fans actually stuck around in the grandstands until it became obvious that Mother Nature was going to prevail.

Let's hope the forecast changes for the Watkins Glen weekend, it seems that Saturday might not be as bad as earlier forecast. But Friday and Sunday still look a little iffy.

[Bob Tanner]

Good synopsis. Napa Winshield Wipers 200? I like it. It has that certain sens caché?

A question: How did the fans react to the bumbling and fumbling NASCAR did cvoncerning the running in the rain? The race fans there are used to a more professionally run operation. I wondered if the show might have made them alittle disenchanted?

[onearmsteve]

thanks for the re-cap.