Brickyard 400 pushed to Monday after rainfall

SPEEDWAY, Ind. (WISH) – “Mother Nature, she wins every time,” said driver Jeffrey Earnhardt.

Rain washed out Friday and Saturday practice for the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and forced NASCAR officials to postpone the race until Monday.

“I feel like the candidate that just lost that has to come out and give his concession speech,” said IMS President Doug Boles. “Unfortunately we’ve just lost to tropical storm Gordon.”

Just how difficult is it to prepare for a race at a track where you’ve had no time to practice?

“It’s tough, you know. Obviously you want to get practice so you got an idea of what your car is gonna perform like,” said Earnhardt. “We’re very fortunate to have a good group of guys. I feel confident going into the race. We did our homework; I feel like we got an upper hand on a lot of teams that we usually race around.”

Even though it’s delayed, the allure of winning a crown jewel still resonates with drivers.

“It’s just an incredible place,” said Earnhardt. “The history here and what it means — to one: be able to run here, but two: get a win here, is just incredible. It’s still there, even though it’s getting pushed back Monday.”

“The fans at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway are resilient. It’s been fun to watch how much they care about this place and sat out here all day long. Looked like we were gonna get it in for a while, in fact, I even tweeted that I felt pretty confident. We’ll see where we end up tomorrow, weather looks good tomorrow, hopefully we can get rid of this Gordon, and we’ll see who wins the 25th running of the Big Machine Vodka 400,” said Boles.

The Brickyard 400 set to run at 2 p.m. Monday, and the weather is supposed to be much better. Boles says all tickets will be honored at the gate, as NASCAR tries to get this crown jewel of a race in before the playoffs start.