Behind the Scenes at the 2012 Daytona 500; Or, What Was Going On While You Were Watching Juan Pablo Hit a Jet Dryer

"If this thing gets rained out before the end, we're screwed, I mean, it's a lot of money." The Fox PR man kneeling beside me was talking in a whisper inside a trailer filled with executives whose eyes were glued to the overhead monitors. It was five minutes after the long-delayed start of the Daytona 500, Monday, February 27, and the race was 30 hours behind schedule. For Fox, if the never-before-rained-out 500 now had to be put over again until the next day, the issue was not only lost ad revenue (the audience share for Tuesday daytime being considerably less than for "sports Sunday") but the 500-mile race in Phoenix the next weekend. Phoenix is 2100 miles away. Fox would have to get its caravan of 29 trailers there in time for practice on Friday morning—which may have been no more, no less than the car owners' problems in having to send their haulers back to home-base Charlotte for fresh race cars first—but it was a logistical nightmare any way you cut it. Mike Helton, ­NASCAR's president, had called a meeting at 9 that morning to acknowledge that if they didn't get through this evening and the rain didn't quit by morning—as some weather reports indicated—the next available date was not until Easter Sunday. Screwed indeed. (more…) from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com

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