Weather Update: Will Rain Affect NASCAR Cup Series Martinsville Race During the Sunday Restart?

Published 04/11/2021, 6:30 AM EDT

Rain and weather conditions continued to wreak havoc on the NASCAR weekend at Martinsville, as Saturday night’s NASCAR Cup Series race was postponed after just 42 laps. On Friday, the Xfinity Series race was also pushed to Sunday after a few laps.

The Xfinity race will resume at noon ET on Sunday, following which the Cup drivers will take to the track at 4 pm ET.

In the Cup Series race, Joey Logano took an early lead after leading the field to green. However, Denny Hamlin stole the lead from him on Lap 5 and kept his lead until the race was red-flagged due to rain and wet conditions after 42 laps.

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Thus, Hamlin will lead the field when the race resumes on Sunday.

Will rain play spoilsport again in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville?

After a couple of frustrating days for everyone involved, there is good news in store for NASCAR on Sunday. While cloudy conditions are expected early on Sunday, the chances of rain are very less – 15-20% – around the Xfinity race’s start time.

Later, much clearer conditions are in the forecast for the start of the Cup Series race early in the evening. So a lot of NASCAR racing is in store for Sunday, at the exciting and historic short track in Martinsville.

In the Cup race, Hamlin and Logano were the top-two drivers when the race stopped. Behind them, Ryan Blaney, Martin Truex Jr., and Chase Elliott secured the top-five.

The first caution of the Cup race came out just towards the end of Saturday’s proceedings as James Davison crashed on Turn 4. Soon after, the race was postponed.

Race leader Denny Hamlin looks back on an eventful day

Hamlin lamented the high number of rain delays recently in NASCAR. Even during the last race week at Bristol, both the Cup Series and Truck Series were affected by rain.

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“NASCAR cannot catch a break. I mean, gosh, this is crazy how many rain delays and whatnot we’ve had,” Hamlin said during the rain break. At the same time, he was happy that the few laps of racing at least gave him some information ahead of Sunday’s restart.

“But appreciate them sticking it out and at least let us try to get some laps in there. And now we’ve got some information and we’ll go from there,” he added.

With much better conditions and a dry track expected on Sunday, drivers will hope that the rain gods do stay away throughout the day.

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Written by:

Aayush Majumdar is a NASCAR content strategist, a Tennis Writer, and a sports analyst at EssentiallySports. He is well-tenured as a tennis and NASCAR writer, with over 900 articles across both sports. After pursuing a Post Graduate program in Sports Management, Aayush explored various roles in Sports Media, including a Sports Reporting role at a leading English daily.

Weather Update: Will Rain Affect NASCAR Cup Series Martinsville Race During the Sunday Restart?

Will rain play spoilsport again in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville?

Race leader Denny Hamlin looks back on an eventful day

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