2025 NASCAR season finally ended fans' favorite conspiracy theory

Perhaps no fanbase is as vocal with complaints, gripes, and theories with or about their sport quite like NASCAR's. For better and worse, everybody has something to say about everything, whether it be the car package, the playoff system, or even just a pebble in the track's asphalt.

However, it is fair to say that fans can be forgiven for being frustrated with weather delays, specifically postponements.

There's nothing worse than being excited all week to watch Sunday's race, only to sit on your couch and be forced to wait even longer, just for the race to be pushed back anyway.

Additionally, those who paid for a ticket, arranged a weekend getaway, and even flew into town to attend the event have to get soaked, and potentially not even see the race before having to fly home.

Seemingly every year, at least one of the events at Daytona International Speedway gets impacted by some sort of weather delay. In fact, four of the six most recent Daytona 500's have been impacted by weather, with two of those four having been postponed to Monday.

Across all three NASCAR national series, 2025 was a complete anomaly in this regard.

At least a few times every season, a race will be either delayed, postponed, or even called early due to inclement weather. When there's a stretch of races affected in a relatively short order, it gets extremely frustrating.

That has led many fans, media members and drivers to come up with conspiracy theories to cope and potentially explain. Many believe that bad weather simply follows NASCAR wherever they go. Several times over the past few years, fans have posted screenshots on social media of their weather radars showing clear skies around the country, except for where the race is taking place, because of course.

NASCAR Hall of Famer and former Fox Sports color commentator Darrell Waltrip even came up with the "vortex theory", which claims green flag racing builds an invisible vortex of heat over track, which can supposedly repel storms and keep rain from falling.

This theory has been debated for years, but doesn't it often feel like rain often only starts falling during cautions?

Speaking of debates, those related to weather really seemed to die down in the NASCAR community this past season, because rain was rarely ever a factor. In the case of postponements, there weren't any such races across the Cup Series, the Xfinity Series, and the Craftsman Truck Series.

That also continued an unforeseen, but extremely welcome, streak that started at the 2024 Daytona 500.

Though the 2025 Daytona 500 got a slightly late start, the 2024 Daytona 500 remains the most recent race to be postponed to the following day. Combined with every race from all three national series since then, NASCAR has run a record 183 straight national series races without a postponement.

As "nascarcasm" also hilariously pointed out, the only big event at a NASCAR track that was moved to the next day in 2025 wasn't even a NASCAR race.

Rather, it was Major League Baseball's "Speedway Classic" between the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds at Bristol Motor Speedway in early August. Bristol is usually a shoo-in for at least one weather postponement every year, specifically with the spring race, but this year's went to the MLB game.

How long can this historic weather pattern continue?

It's important to note that just because there hasn't been an official postponement in a long while, doesn't mean that rain has simply avoided every event since then. In both 2024 and 2025, there have been several races impacted by weather, one way or another.

The 2024 Coca-Cola 600 was infamously cut well short of its scheduled 400-lap distance, just as Kyle Larson attempted to hop into his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet after completing his first Indy 500.

The Daytona 500 and the Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway also endured several-hour delays in 2025 before being run, while the Viva Mexico 250 at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez also saw the use of wet weather tires for the majority of the event.

Any betting man would think that this incredible streak will probably come to an end at some point in 2026, possibly even on opening weekend.

At some point, "Mother Nature" will simply be "Mother Nature", and there's nothing anybody can do about it. With this having become a hot topic early in the offseason, it would only be fitting for the 2026 Daytona 500 to be run on the following Monday or Tuesday.

However, should that happen at Daytona or at any other race, it would be tough to complain. Plus, whether it be changes to the playoff system, fallout from NASCAR's court case against 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports, or any potential car changes, there will likely be plenty more to dissect than an unlucky weather delay that we've thankfully gone so long without.