NASCAR changes Charlotte schedule again due to weather

NASCAR has made a further change to the weekend schedule at Charlotte Motor Speedway, given the anticipated bad weather.

Saturday afternoon’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race, the Alsco Uniforms 300, had initially been scheduled to get underway at 1:00 p.m. ET, with the green flag set for 1:19 p.m. ET.

Due to a less than ideal weather forecast, NASCAR moved up the start time by one hour to 12:19 p.m. ET, with Fox Sports 1 set to provide live coverage beginning at 12:00 p.m. ET instead.

Now a further change has been made, with the start time of the 200-lap race around the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) Concord, North Carolina oval having been moved up by 10 additional minutes. The green flag is set to fly at 12:09 p.m. ET.

Whether or not this change makes any difference in terms of the sport’s ability to get the race in today as planned remains to be seen. While it wasn’t raining at around 10:30 a.m. ET, when NASCAR made the change, rain is expected to start soon and continue throughout the rest of the day and all throughout Sunday, according to The Weather Channel.

Note that rain tires are not available for any NASCAR ovals longer than one mile.

More than likely, NASCAR will have to make more changes made to the weekend schedule at Charlotte Motor Speedway as well.

There is an 84% chance of rain this evening, which is when Cup Series qualifying is scheduled to take place for Sunday night’s Coca-Cola 600. Practice is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. ET, with qualifying set to follow at 7:50 p.m. ET. If qualifying is canceled, the starting lineup would be set by the metric, with Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron on pole.

A full provisional lineup can be found here.

The Coca-Cola 600 itself is scheduled to take place on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. ET, with live coverage set to be provided by Fox. There is an 85% chance of rain on Sunday evening, which could force the race to be postponed. There is a 41% chance for morning showers on Monday.

NOTE: Cup Series practice and qualifying has since been canceled, and the Xfinity Series race has been postponed to Monday at 12:00 p.m. ET (Fox Sports 1).

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