Nascar Race Today

FORT WORTH, Texas - If the NCAA men's basketball Final Four wasn't enough to play havoc with the NASCAR schedule this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, rain is playing a role Sunday, delaying the start of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.

Heavy rain hit the track throughout Sunday morning and continued past 1:30 p.m. ET, and NASCAR has put all prerace activities on hold for the race, which was scheduled to go green at 3:17 p.m. ET.

The rain let up a bit around 2:15 and NASCAR began track-drying efforts.

The National Weather Service predicts an 80 percent chance of rain this afternoon, dropping to 40 percent after 8 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 334 laps, meaning the race is official if the leader completes 167 laps.

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Texas Motor Speedway has lights and no curfew, and it is expected that TMS and NASCAR officials would run well into the night to finish the race. They typically do, but they have extra incentive to avoid racing in the same market Monday as the NCAA men's basketball championship game in Dallas. NASCAR has five of its new Air Titan track-drying mechanisms, three of its "old" version of the Air Titan and the track also has six jet driers in hopes of getting the 1.5-mile surface dry in 75-90 minutes.

TMS is the only track on the circuit that has a ticket policy where if the race is rained out, a fan who doesn't stay for Monday can exchange the ticket for a TMS race either later this year or the spring race next season.

"I would think you could go green flag 8 (or) 9 o'clock (Central) and still get it in before midnight or so," TMS President Eddie Gossage said. "I remember we have raced at Charlotte until 2 in the morning, if they want to do it. We'll see. Everybody loses in every way that we're looking at it, but I think your preference is to do it today as opposed to tomorrow."

Racing Monday (where there's a 30 percent chance of rain) not only would mean getting overshadowed by the Final Four, it also could create a logistical challenge for the sport's support personnel trying to reschedule travel for late Monday or Tuesday amid the Final Four.

The Final Four semifinal games Saturday were the reason NASCAR is running a Sunday afternoon race at Texas, which has traditionally had a Saturday night race in April.

It is NASCAR policy not to start a race if it is not prepared time-wise to run to the finish. Once it starts a race, the priority is to get to at least halfway. Fox Sports will televise the race, and it has the option to move the race from Fox to Fox Sports 1 after 7 p.m. ET.

Tony Stewart is on the pole for the event, the seventh race of the Cup season.