NASCAR Cup Series

Sketchy forecast for Kansas race might leave teams scrambling

Published May. 9, 2015 11:40 a.m. ET

Tom Jensen

UPDATED AT 6 P.M. ET

As has happened so often already this season, the weather forecast for tonight's SpongeBob SquarePants 400 at Kansas Speedway (FOX Sports 1, 8 p.m. ET) is sketchy at best.

As of 6 p.m. ET, weather.com placed the odds of rain at the 1.5-mile Kansas track at 0 percent at 8 p.m., rising to 60 percent by 8:45 p.m. and 80 percent by 9 p.m. If those numbers hold, then NASCAR may be able to get the race to half distance before the heavens open up and send rain torrenting down on the track.

Of course, those are just estimates. A lot could change between now and the green flag. But you can bet NASCAR and the teams will do everything possible to get the race in tonight, especially since the forecast for Sunday doesn't look great, either.

No one wants to race on Mother's Day.

That much is a given.

There are other considerations as well, though. The next two weekends, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races at Charlotte Motor Speedway. And while it's easy to think that racing at home would be easier than travelling, that isn't really the case. The two weeks in Charlotte are two of the busiest of the year, with sponsor meetings, team days, fan club obligations, events at the NASCAR Hall of Fame and more.

All the teams and crews will be stressed out racing at home.

The last thing they want is one or two days less to prep for the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race and then the Coca-Cola 600.

In exclusive interviews with FOXSports.com, crew chief Chad Knaus and team owner Michael Waltrip both said they are definitely hoping to get tonight's race in as scheduled.

"We're fortunate enough now that the majority of the people in our industry, they have their (race car) inventory to where they need it to be so that they don't have to focus on their All-Star car or the qualifying race car too much. So they should be able to come home and turn that stuff around," said Knaus, who has won six championships as Jimmie Johnson's crew chief.

"But some of the lower-end teams, that's going to be very, very difficult for them," added Knaus. "Parts are in short supply. Car inventories are in short supply, the personnel that builds the cars. So that's a big challenge for some of the lower-funded teams."

Crew chiefs, especially championship ones, learn to control every variable they can in their environment. But even they can't control the weather.

"We have to do what we have to do," Knaus said of the possibility of a rain postponement at Kansas. "There's nothing we can do about it."

Knaus then smiled. "Then again, I'm all for racing in the rain," he said. "If we can get to that point, it would be great."

As for Waltrip, he said he was worried about how fans would be affected by rain.

"It's not good," Waltrip said of the possible rain. "But it puts more stress on the fans, I think, and that kind of breaks my heart. I love when people load up and drive from Canada and all over the South and Southwest and make their way to the heartland in Kansas to watch cars race. And it breaks my heart if we don't get to race.

"The teams, we get paid to deal with that," said Waltrip. "That's part of our job. The fans, they don't really sign up for it and that hurts my feelings."