F1 v NASCAR: How US racing is finally discovering the magic of rain

NASCAR New Hampshire wet race 2024

Formula 1 fans know that racing in the rain can produce some of motorsport’s greatest moments, but here in the United States, the NASCAR community has been slower to adapt. Now, though, NASCAR has introduced wet-track tires — and that mindset is starting to change.

This past weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, a rain delay placed the oval race on hold for over two hours before the track dried enough for NASCAR to feel comfortable equipping its teams with Goodyear’s new wet-compound tires and sending the field out to play. The result? Magic.

Why couldn’t NASCAR race in the rain?

There’s one big reason as to why NASCAR hasn’t raced in the rain: it’s an oval-racing series, and oval racing in the rain is dangerous.

While Formula 1 cars are high-performance machines designed to compete on various styles of circuit, NASCAR’s stock cars have long been specialized in order to hit high speeds on ovals. Those oval tracks often feature banked corners, requiring drivers to push hard in the turns to balance out the forces acting on their machines to stay on the racing line.

As a result, oval-racing series generally develop soft-compound tires designed specifically for oval tracks, which we’d call “slick”or treadless tires. If there’s moisture on the track, it reduces the all-important traction and can send a car barreling into the wall — something that’s true in both NASCAR and IndyCar racing.

More on the relationship between F1 and NASCAR

👉 The NASCAR mindset Formula 1 needs to bring to intentional contact

👉 Why so serious? Four valuable lessons F1 can learn from polarising NASCAR series

Why is NASCAR changing?

The current generation of car used in NASCAR Cup Series racing is known as the “Next-Gen car.” In essence, this stock car is designed to be more symmetrical than NASCAR’s machines of the past, more closely mimicking a GT-style stock car than a former oval-based Cup car.

The Next-Gen car ties into NASCAR’s more contemporary goals: to grow the series’ appeal by bringing in new talent and competing on more road and street courses. So, instead of being a primarily oval-based series, NASCAR is hoping to produce a greater diversity of racing action.

With more road and street courses, then, it would make sense for Goodyear — NASCAR’s tire supplier — to provide a grooved tire designed for wet-track racing. Goodyear brought those tires last year, but the NASCAR Cup Series was really put to the test on Sunday when rain threatened to call an end to the oval race at New Hampshire.

NASCAR wet-weather drawbacks

Now, NASCAR’s wet tires aren’t perfect, nor is its implementation of wet racing procedures.

Despite Goodyear’s grooved tires being called “wet weather” tires, many pundits hypothesized that they should be called “wet surface” tires instead. That’s because, even though its tires are grooved, NASCAR doesn’t have other procedures in place to effectively facilitate wet-weather racing on ovals.

On oval tracks, NASCAR Cup cars do not need to don windshield wipers, which can cause issues with the spray kicked up by the competition. In addition, many Cup drivers also expressed concerns with the kind of blinking red rain lights used in other series to indicate the location of a car in front of you, but without them, racing can’t effectively take place.

So, as a series of thunderstorms red-flagged Sunday’s Cup race, many onlookers were initially critical that the series didn’t continue racing with its “wet” tires under “wet” conditions, wondering why the track would need to begin to dry in order for racing to continue.

A spectacular display

It took over two hours for the rain to dissipate and for the track surface to dry just enough to equip the Cup Series field with wet tires and send them racing — but once they hit the track, it was a huge treat.

In dry-weather oval racing, the competition is often confined to a “lane” or two. The “lane” represents a racing line; there is often one preferred lane, alongside other non-preferred lanes that can be used for passing. The fewer lanes, the less action.

When the New Hampshire race resumed, though, multiple new lanes opened up — meaning that drivers had more lines around the track and therefore more opportunities to pass the competition.

That meant we saw more audacious passes and bold moves. Of course, that also resulted in some contact and overtime restarts — but the fans that stuck it out through the end enjoyed the race.

“I think the way we started this whole wet-weather-tire-process was basically we wanted to get our races started on time,” Elton Sawyer, NASCAR SVP of Competition, said of the race.

It also allowed the race to run to completion, which is one of the biggest concerns with weather-impacted oval racing. Fans were deeply disappointed that the 2024 Coca-Cola 600 was shortened by storms; at New Hampshire, they were able to witness an exceptional race to the finish.

Perhaps Christopher Bell’s win wasn’t quite on par with iconic wet-weather F1 drives like Jenson Button during the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix, or the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix — but it did give NASCAR fans a taste of the rainy day magic.

Room to grow

Wet-weather racing will still have limited applications in the NASCAR Cup Series. On longer ovals that feature higher speeds and greater forces, even grooved tires will struggle to find grip. Driver Denny Hamlin noted on his podcast Actions Detrimental that drivers will also lose much-needed sensation when racing in the wet on larger tracks, resulting in more accidents.

Further, there were several questionable procedural calls that need to be addressed.

First, while it did seem fair that NASCAR allowed every team to change tires during the red-flag period, it seemed less fair that NASCAR also allowed teams to top up with fuel and completely level the strategic playing field — especially for the teams that had gambled on the red flag signaling the end of the race.

Plus, NASCAR is currently in total control of when teams can put on wet weather tires — or change them. Because cars were parked on pit lane during the red-flag period, the pit lane wasn’t dried. NASCAR wanted to avoid any unnecessary accidents on pit road due to slippery conditions, but it also felt that the series’ heavy-handed management nullified what could have been an even more compelling race.

Finally, NASCAR will also need to reckon with the fact that, at some point, it cannot split its weather-impacted races in two. New Hampshire’s Cup race admittedly felt like two totally different events sandwiched together thanks to the lengthy red-flag, the strategy reset, and the series’ heavy-handed decisions regarding the rules.

But considering that this is one of NASCAR’s very first rainy experiments, it did feel like a leap in the right direction.