Gridlock Guy: If professional NASCAR drivers cannot drive in sleet, then neither should you

ATLANTA — After two recent wintry swipes in north Georgia, drivers largely abided by the directive to keep off of the roads. If the receipts were not enough to drive home the point – the pileups on I-985 and Highway 316 in Gwinnett during the height of the snow – then maybe this will. Professional drivers also struggle to drive on slick pavement. 

NASCAR’s season-opening exhibition race, The Clash, was set to run on Sunday, February 1st at Winston-Salem, North Carolina’s Bowman-Gray Stadium. But the same storm that scattered snow through northeast Georgia dumped historic amounts of it in North Carolina. NASCAR initially moved and contracted the two-day show to a Sunday-only schedule. 

But feet of snow don’t just disappear in bitter cold and with the roads in bad shape, NASCAR postponed proceedings to Monday – and then Wednesday. The sport worked with the state and authorities did not want people on the roads for the first few days after the storm. 

All preliminary events and the main race commenced on Wednesday, February 4th, surrounding roads and the track were clear. The main event saw a green flag around 6:30 p.m., setting it up for a primetime ending on FOX. But a mix of rain and sleet rolled in during a scheduled halfway break at lap 100 and turned the night sideways. 

The novelty of this exhibition race is that it is run on a quarter-mile racetrack around the football field for Winston-Salem State University. The track is half the size of NASCAR’s shortest tracks on its regular schedule. So, speeds are slow, quarters are close, and the track is flat. This means that drivers have to basically hit each other or make big mistakes to create passes. 

NASCAR and other paved motorsports normally race with slick, non-grooved tires to maximize contact with the racing surface. But NASCAR does allow teams to use grooved, wet weather tires at smaller, slower tracks. They did just that in the second half of the Clash and a sloppy, halting race ensued. 

Only two crashes slowed the race during the first 100 laps in dry conditions. After the rain-sleet mix, these elite, professional drivers crashed and brought out yellow flags 10 times. Their lap times were roughly four seconds slower in wet weather. When NASCAR stopped the race at the advent of precipitation, the sleet and rain began to freeze over the rubber buildup in the lower groove on the track, rendering it useless – even with grooved tires. 

Truthfully, racing in the rain was entertaining. But as the caution flags piled up, it got tough to watch. The race ran so long that FOX had to bump it to low-tier FS2; the event eclipsed the three-hour window to run 50 miles. Ryan Preece won The Clash and, fittingly, he is from Connecticut. 

Racing conditions are different and are far more aggressive than a commute on civilian streets. But these drivers of high horsepower, aerodynamically trimmed racecars struggled on slick roads. They always do. 

The comparison here may not be apples to apples, but it is not apples to oranges either. Professional drivers, whether in racecars or tractor trailers, struggle in waterlogged or icy conditions. Thus, the rest of us will also. The reason Georgia’s latest winter bash looked nothing like 2014 is because most people left the elbow room for crews to treat the roads and did not weigh down first responders with dozens of crashes. 

Doug Turnbull covers the traffic/transportation beat for 11Alive with Rachel Cox-Rosen. Watch their live reports from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on 11Alive+. His Gridlock Guy column also appears on Sundays in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Subscribe to the weekly “Gridlock Guy” newsletter for the column here.