There is no mad dash to the nearest phone bank to make plane reservations home. Sports cars, God bless em, take to water like ducks. I am reminded of this as I sit in the tower at Rockingham Dragway watching a monsoon roll through the Carolinas and lay waste to the Holley Spring Nationals presented by Advance Auto Parts and Castrol GTX, the official curtain-raiser to the 2001 IHRA Summit Drag Racing Series. I don't imagine this is the kind of reception IHRA president Bill Bader had planned for the new owners of his organization, SFX Motor Sports Group. While it may be the interplanetary leader in the promotion and production of live entertainment events, SFX, I dare say, is unfamiliar with the concept of the rainout.
Rain is the common enemy of racer, fan, sponsor, official and promoter.
The best of promotions can be laid to waste by a maverick front blowing in from the coast or down from Canada or from wherever rain comes. It looks like we're staring at the resurrection of that title. Of course, the humor was lost on those of us who, a day later, were huddled around computer weather stations, waiting not so patiently for word of when we would be back so that we could dash to the nearest phone bank to make reservations home. Let's just find a way to run in the rain. Or, at the very least, a way to dome a drag strip without causing mass asphyxiation.