NASCAR has postponed its Cup Series dirt race at Bristol until 4 p.m. Monday, citing overnight heavy rainfall and local flood warnings, safety concerns and a menacing Sunday forecast at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The historic Food City Dirt Race, an event that will mark the first time NASCAR’s Cup Series races on dirt in 51 years, was originally scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on FOX. The race will be delayed a day and and is scheduled to air on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

The Truck Series race, the Pinty’s Truck Race on Dirt, will now take place before the Cup race on Monday at 12 p.m. That race will be broadcast on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

Scattered showers continued around the track Sunday afternoon. Images shared on social media Sunday morning showed significant rainfall around the half-mile speedway in Bristol, Tenn.

“This was a small creek yesterday,” Daniel Baldwin said in a video he posted Twitter around 8:30 a.m. Sunday of aflooded speedway parking lot. “All of the merchandise vendor tents are under water, and under good water at that.”

Baldwin’s video shows two ducks swimming in running water in the lot near a speedway entrance. Baldwin createsYouTube videos about NASCAR and said he has been to many racing events at Bristol since 2009, but had never seen that much water at the track before Sunday.

“I’ve seen it flooded in that area before but never quite to the point where the entire area was inaccessible,” Baldwin told The Observer.

NASCAR alreadycanceled its heat races Saturday that were originally intended to set the starting lineup for the Cup and Truck Series races due to rain. Trucks attempted to start Saturday’s heat races after roughly two hours of track preparation that followed a period of dry weather, but the track was still in rough shape at the start of the first heat and NASCAR red flagged the muddy qualifying event after one lap.

When more rain picked up during the red flag, NASCAR canceled the heats and postponed its Truck race — originally scheduled to start 8 p.m. Saturday — to Sunday at approximately 9 p.m. on FS2 following the Cup Series race on Sunday.

The National Weather Service issued aflash flood warning Sunday morning for Sullivan County in northeast Tennessee, where Bristol Motor Speedway is located. That warning extended through 11:30 a.m. While precipitation levels were expected tolighten to around a 10% chance of rain by Sunday evening, between 2 and 4 inches of rain already reportedly had fallen in the area by Sunday morning, and the track had been highly saturated from rainfall overnight.

Rain is expected to stop by Monday, with sun in the forecast and a high near 59 degrees during the day, according to the National Weather Service.

Another highly anticipated NASCAR event, the Daytona 500, was impacted by rain this year. The season-opening race was delayed for nearly six hours due storms at the racetrack in Daytona Beach, Fla. According toSports Media Watch, the race dipped from an average of 8.48 million viewers at the beginning of FOX’s broadcast before the rain delay to a final average of 4.83 million viewers, setting all-time race low in Daytona 500 viewership and ratings.

NASCAR cited safety concerns for its most recent postponement with flooding in the area. Bristol Motor Speedway president Jerry Caldwell said in a tweet that the track was hit with approximately three inches of rain in 24 hours and thanked race fans for their patience.

“We want to make sure everyone can come have fun in a safe manner,”Caldwell wrote. “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. We’re going to have a great day tmrw!”

More information on ticketing and Bristol Motor Speedway’s weather policy can be found on thespeedway website.

This story was originally publishedMarch 28, 2021 at 11:18 AM.

Alexandra Andrejev

The Charlotte Observer

NASCAR and Charlotte FC beat reporter Alex Andrejev joined The Observer in January 2020 following an internship at The Washington Post. She is a two-time APSE award winner for her NASCAR beat coverage and National Motorsports Press Association award winner. She is the host of McClatchy’s podcast “Payback” about women’s soccer.Support my work with a digital subscription