These fans could have called it quits. They could have picked up their coolers, packed up their campers and pulled out of New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
But they waited in the rain for a race that was supposed to start at 2 p.m., was moved up to 1 p.m., and ultimately didn’t begin until 4:24 p.m.
Their patience was rewarded with a race that came down to a dogfight between the two most dominant drivers of the NASCAR Cup Series season, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch.
The closing laps featured the kind of racing that fans crave.
The No. 18 Joe Gibbs Toyota was giving Busch fits for most of the day, but his expertise was on full display as he pulled away on a late restart for the lead.
The only car within reach was the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Ford of Harvick, who, with seven laps left, used a bump-and-run to take the lead from Busch and hang on for his third Cup win at NHMS and 43rd career victory.
The sprint across the start-finish line to conclude the Foxwoods Resorts Casino 301 was met with standing applause from the fans who stuck it out in the crummy weather.
Harvick circled back and burned up the remaining rubber he had on his rear tires, sending a cloud of smoke over the fans crowding the catch fence, and parked his baby-blue Busch Beer racing machine 8 feet in front of them.
The speedway needed a race like this, one that reminds fans who may believe the glory days are long gone that the sport can still produce competition that pulls you to the edge of your seat.
It started with a dominant run by defending Cup champion Martin Truex Jr. to win the first stage, as he did in each of the previous two races at NHMS.
Rising star Chase Elliott, son of a NASCAR hall-of-famer who at age 22 is the appointed leader of NASCAR’s next generation of drivers, surged ahead and won stage two. It was his first stage win of the year.
Aric Almirola, in his seventh full-time season racing Cup cars, seemed poised to earn his second career win until a slow tire change in the pits set him back. He spun the tires a few laps later on the restart where Busch and Harvick pulled away.
NASCAR has been trying to align itself with the stick-and-ball sports that eat up all the minutes on ESPN ever since it introduced the Chase in 2004. Fans like playoffs, they thought, so why not give them one?
But this sport isn’t like football or baseball or basketball, and it shouldn’t try to be. One major difference between racing and those sports is that there are no “home teams.” This doesn’t mean the sport lacks passionate fans. Folks fly the flag of their favorite driver with as much pride as any Patriots fan at a tailgate party in Foxborough.
The only regionally aligned institutions in racing are the tracks, and New Hampshire Motor Speedway is the home team around here.
That’s why it’s so easy to understand why fans were miffed when Speedway Motorsports Inc., the parent company of NHMS, decided to yank the track’s September race out from under them. What if Robert Kraft announced that the Patriots would play half of their home games in another city where they believe there’s untapped interest in football? Can’t imagine that would be received well in New England.
It’s unfortunate that not every fan who visited this weekend stuck around through the rain to see Sunday’s main event, but no one can perfectly predict the weather. What’s more unfortunate is that there are 363 days until the next Cup race instead of the 10 short weeks Loudon loyalists are used to waiting. NHMS will fill in the September weekend with a 250-lap Modifieds race, which comes with the biggest purse of the season at $181,000.
These fans could have thrown in the towel when rain threatened their only race of the year, but many did not and it paid off. Even though SMI quit on Loudon’s September race, these fans still support the home team at NHMS.