It is not uncommon for bad weather to be one of the storylines leading up to the NASCAR Cup Series season-opening Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway, with three of the five most recent editions of the "Great American Race" having been altered in some way, shape, or form due to the four-letter "r" word.
In 2020, the race started on time on Sunday, but rain forced it to be stopped, and it was not resumed until Monday evening.
Then in 2021, precipitation resulted in the race being started Sunday afternoon and stopped again. It was resumed late Sunday night and not completed until the wee hours of Monday morning.
The 2022 and 2023 races were run as planned, but the 2024 race saw the second ever full-blown postponement. The race was pushed back from Sunday to Monday entirely.
The fact that only one other Daytona 500 in the 66-year history of the event had been completely postponed was actually somewhat surprising; the only other instance took place in 2012.
Daytona 500 schedule changed due to bad weather prediction
Now in 2025, the forecast has been pretty wishy-washy all week. But that is to be expected in Daytona Beach, Florida, even in February.
As a result of the forecast calling for rain on Sunday, NASCAR made the decision to move the start time for Sunday afternoon's 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) high-banked oval up by an hour – 71 minutes, to be exact.
Fox had been slated to begin live coverage from the "World Center of Racing" beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET, with the green flag scheduled for 3:11 p.m. ET. Now coverage has been bumped up to 1:30 p.m. ET, and the green flag is slated for 2:00 p.m. ET. Pre-race coverage is scheduled to commence at 11:30 a.m. ET.
All things considered, NASCAR giving themselves an extra hour-plus to work with seemed like a decision that can't really hurt much.
According to The Weather Channel, there is a 60% chance of rain on Sunday afternoon, and AccuWeather is even less optimistic, calling for an 88% chance of a thunderstorm, even explicitly noting that "a delay or postponement of the race due to rain cannot be ruled out".
Fortunately, neither forecaster is predicting more than a 4% chance of rain on Monday or Tuesday, so if the race is postponed, expect it to be run the next day.
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