First thing I have to say: you can’t make every race fan happy. Doesn’t matter if it’s a schedule change, new TV partners, or a menu change at a racetrack; race fans are going to complain no matter what. 

So if NASCAR had moved the race after the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race late Saturday night, fans would be complaining that we were making them wait to run it while it was dry outside. It’s a lose-lose situation to try to make everyone happy. 

With that out of the way, in my opinion, NASCAR made the right call on Saturday with the time limit on the Truck race. 

Why? Let me tell you why. 

First of all, what if they moved it back after the O’Reilly race? Why are we punishing the folks at the track who got there on time, just for them to wait even longer? 

Not to mention that Atlanta isn’t just a hop, skip, and jump away from the Charlotte area. It’s a 4.5-hour drive one way. Are we really going to make all the teams, drivers, and officials wait until midnight to leave the racetrack when we could have wrapped up the race hours ago? 

Mad Racefan: “We paid for a full race, and we want to see them run the laps!”

You got to see 125 damn good laps of racing Saturday afternoon, just 10 laps short of the adversity distance. I’d understand an argument to move this race back a couple of hours if they weren’t going to make it to halfway before the timer went off, but y’all got 125 of the 135 laps advertised. That’s the best-case scenario for the weather-impacted race. 

Mad Racefan: “Make the O’Reilly race wait a little longer.”

If FOX Sports still had the right to that series, I’d totally be down for that. But guess what, they don’t. The CW paid a lot of money to broadcast the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series on time, and they’re not going to fold over to let another series on another network take their time they paid for. 

Look, we saw a really good truck race on Saturday under unique circumstances with a timed race. Will it happen again? Probably not, although I wouldn’t be against it. Could there be changes to clean it up so that the race fan knows ahead of time? Absolutely. 

But I thought NASCAR made the right call on Saturday, and know it doesn’t make you a shill to believe that. It means you have common sense.