The Backstretch Blog: Blame it on the Rain?

You all remember Milli Vanilli right? I know most of you have probably have tried to forget the great '90 fakers. But hang with me, in "their" song Blame it on the Rain, the duo lip synced "You gotta blame it on something...Blame it on the rain."

So I guess I will start there with trying to explain away why the rain shortened race on Sunday was so painful to watch. Why there wasn't a single caution until the rain came out, and why the field was so painful strung out. Some drivers said they knew the rain was coming and they were trying to be aggressive, with out slowing the pace down with a caution, so they could get to half way.

"We were watching the radar, looking and paying attention to that, looking at the bands we had to deal with that, " said winning crew chief Steve Addington.

Okay, but that happens every week where there is possible weather. So I'm not sure I want to blame the rain. So what else is out there?

The track? It's big, cars can race three even four wide in spots. Meaning it's easier to pass and easier for cars to get strung out.

"I mean, obviously the bigger the track, the more opportunity you have for cars to get strung out," said Sunday's winner Tony Stewart. "But the great thing is it's hard to get racetracks to where they have multiple grooves, to have a bottom lane, a middle lane, all the way from the top to the bottom, have all the room in the middle that is about even as fast depending on what you set your car up for."

Okay, so the track could be part of the problem. What about the cars? Are they just too good? Should they be a little tougher to handle so cars can't just drive away from the pack? Maybe there is too much practice to allow teams to adjust on the car.

Kyle Busch told the media on Sunday that not having a caution all day didn't affect his team, cause they were pretty good from the start.

"No, not at all.  The beginning part of the race, our car was really good," said Busch. "We didn't change anything the first time.  Second time we came down, getting a little bit loose, so we wanted to tighten it up a little bit.  Made some adjustments.  Made it a little bit better."

But again, multiple good cars show up every week. So that cant be it. Which brings me to one last place to put blame, Tony Stewart. You may not like they way the race unfolded or the way it ended, but it's hard to deny Smoke was the class of the field or that the 14 team is on some kind of roll right now.

"The history shows in the last 13 years we have not had the strongest starts the first third of the year," said Stewart. "I'm really, really excited about the start that we've got going. We've been strong everywhere we've been."

In reality, Sunday was probably the perfect storm of all of the above (pun intended). Admittedly, Auto Club Speedway has never provided  the most exciting racing, but a lot of things had to happen to make Sunday happen.

None the less, Milli Vanilli or whoever was actually singing the song, might want consider changing the lyrics a little. "Blame it on the Smoke."