OPINION

By Reid Spencer

updated 4:45 p.m. ET Feb. 26, 2008

FONTANA, Calif. - Didn’t somebody once say something about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure?

And I think I’ve heard something to the effect that those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

In the past 48 hours, NASCAR has taken so many hits about its handling of Sunday’s Auto Club 500 Sprint Cup race that president Mike Helton probably feels more comfortable in a flak jacket than in a business suit.

For the record, late Sunday night, NASCAR finally gave up on restarting the race at Auto Club Speedway after a rain delay that lasted nearly five hours. After the downpour abated, the speedway spent roughly four of those hours in a futile attempt to dry the track.

The air was humid, and water seeping though the racing surface compounded the problem. After spending what seemed an eternity — not to mention a fortune in jet fuel to stoke the giant blow-dryers imported from as far away as Phoenix and Sonoma — NASCAR postponed the race until Monday, 163 laps short of completion and 38 laps short of halfway, the point at which an event becomes official.

You can argue that NASCAR shouldn’t have started the race at all, after water seepage (aka “weepers”) from the seams in the asphalt created wet patches in the racing groove. Accidents in the first 21 laps of the race destroyed the cars and the prospects of Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Casey Mears, Sam Hornish Jr. and Reed Sorenson.

Mears and Hamlin said wet conditions caused the wrecks, but to be fair, driver opinion — even after the accidents — was divided as to whether NASCAR should have started the event in the first place.

Having started the Auto Club 500, however, NASCAR should — and could — have finished it Sunday, at least to the midpoint.

No, the sanctioning body shouldn’t have restarted the race on a wet track. Even with the remaining fans stomping on the grandstand risers and chanting “Let’s go race,” NASCAR made the right call in putting the safety of its drivers ahead of the desire to complete the event — and NASCAR made the right call in delaying its decision as long as possible in trying to give the fans in the stands and the teams in the garage some closure to the proceedings.

What happened on Sunday wasn’t the issue. What didn’t happen on Friday and Saturday — and perhaps even earlier — was.

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For those who claim to be surprised by the inclement weather in Southern California, I suggest The Weather Channel. The last time there was that much rain in the forecast, Noah built an ark.

And for those who didn’t realize that rain and a higher water table might exacerbate a problem with the track, I refer you to the CART Marlboro 500 in October 2000, when weepers surfaced at what was then named California Speedway before the rain-delayed race was run.

Weepers were a problem during Cup qualifying at Texas Motor Speedway in 1998. Before reworking the drainage system at the track, speedway officials had workers cut run-off grooves in the asphalt to help alleviate the problem.

After Mears slipped across a wet spot in Turn 1 and triggered the second wreck on Sunday, when it was still afternoon, track workers at Auto Club Speedway spent the better part of a 67-minute red-flag period cutting run-off grooves in the racing surface. Sound familiar?

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With rain in the forecast throughout the weekend, why wasn’t that done Friday or Saturday, before it became a problem on Sunday? Come to think of it, why wasn’t the drainage issue addressed years ago? As we now know all too well, Southern California isn’t always sunny.

Had the grooves been cut early on Saturday morning, we wouldn’t have wasted more than 45 minutes with circular saws on Sunday afternoon, the race could have reached the halfway point, and fans could have gone home well before 11 p.m. PT knowing who won — after NASCAR called the event at a more reasonable hour.

In a broader sense, we could have escaped California without squandering much of the momentum and good will from a remarkable two weeks in Daytona.

A little foresight would have gone a long way. As it turned out, the solution was a day late — and a lot of dollars short.

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