As Week 5 of the NFL season nears its conclusion, there are 10 quarterbacks (among qualified passers) who have completed at least two-thirds of their pass attempts.
It means that NASCAR has a better chance of canceling a Cup Series qualifying session these days than the majority of quarterbacks have of completing a pass.
Through the first six weeks of the postseason, four qualifying sessions have been canceled due to rain. For some perspective, there were four total qualifying cancelations across the 2024 and 2025 seasons combined. This past regular season saw five cancelations, meaning that there have now been nine in 2026.
You can't really do much about the weather, although this has been a frustrating topic for NASCAR fans over the past several weeks because of how much track position means in the Next Gen car. The qualifying metric NASCAR uses to set the starting lineup in the absence of qualifying has faced its own fair share of scrutiny and will likely see some sort of modification after the 2026 season.
NASCAR Cup Series has seen zero postponements despite constant qualifying rainouts
But what's bizarre about NASCAR's seemingly ongoing ability to attract bad weather wherever it goes (nine out of 28 oval races is nearly one-third of all oval races) is the fact that, despite all of these qualifying cancelations, NASCAR has yet to see a Cup race postponed in 2026.
February's Daytona 500, the June race at Pocono Raceway, and the August race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway were all proactively moved up due to the threat of bad weather later on in the day, but NASCAR has not actually had to postpone a race this year.
It's kind of amazing that the inclement weather has stuck to qualifying days. Even this past weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the threat of rain from Isaias extended into Sunday, and AccuWeather at one point listed a 99% chance of precipitation during the Bank of America 400.
Of course, our theory about weather forecasts on race days is that they'll always overstate the odds of storms. If they're right, you can't say they didn't warn you, and if they're wrong, you won't be upset anyway.
Still, the fact that all nine cancelations in 2026 have been qualifying-related, rather than race-related, is a major silver lining, if not a total gold lining, even if the qualifying metric might not be the best way to go about setting the starting lineups.
According to AccuWeather, there is an 81% chance of rain this coming Saturday at Phoenix Raceway, but only a 2% chance on Sunday. Again, bizarre that this seems to be the norm. But at the end of the day, hard to complain. Live coverage of the Freeway Insurance 500 is set to be provided by USA Network starting at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, October 18.
Add us as a preferred source on Google