LONG POND, Pa. — The final practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway was rained out Saturday.
The 43 starters will have to make do with Friday’s hour practice in preparation for Sunday’s Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500. The race-day forecast called for sunshine and a high of 72 degrees.
“We got a little bit of race runs,” said Clint Bowyer, who qualified 30th and was looking forward to trying to improve his car in the final “Happy Hour” practice. “It isn’t like we haven’t been here in two or three years. We were just here six weeks ago, so everybody kind of knows what to expect as far as the track goes.
“This track does swing a lot, weather related,” he added. “When it clouds up, it gains a lot of grip and a lot of speed. When the sun breaks (out), it gets slick and greasy. That has a lot to do with the outcome of the race and, hopefully, it will be just fine.”
Rookie Regan Smith, who will start 36th, echoed Bowyer.
“It’s definitely not ideal,” he said. “I think we had a pretty good baseline last time here. We were pretty happy with our race car, so we’ll go back and look at those notes a lot and take what we learned yesterday, with the track being a good bit different for us, and try to incorporate that all into a best-educated guess on what we want.”
Cully Barraclough, crew chief for David Gilliland, who will start in third, said the rainout does put a crimp in his team’s preparations.
“There’s always a menu of stuff that we would like to try to improve our car, like everyone else,” Barraclough said. “And a lot of these teams have a lot more experience here than us. But, with the (Car of Tomorrow), everybody is trying to build a new catalog of tools in their chest to improve their car for certain things.
“The one thing we have going for us, even though we made just a short race run off the track (on Friday), that helps out, knowing that you rolled off the truck and it went decent.”
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