Schedule around the elements to avoid Martinsville repeat

There's something cool about a sporting event held in the middle of a weekday afternoon. The first two days of the NCAA basketball tournament is nirvana with hoops going wall-to-wall beginning at 11 in the morning. Major League Baseball opening day is virtually a national holiday around the country with ballparks jammed with fans on Monday or Tuesday afternoons.

However, when a NASCAR race takes the green flag on a Monday, it's usually not a time for celebration.

With a tweak of the schedule, Kasey Kahne and the rest of the Cup field won't have to endure rainouts like this. (Getty Images)

Weekday Sprint Cup events are usually the result of Mother Nature knocking out a scheduled Sunday afternoon affair, as was the case Monday at Martinsville. When that happens there are more losers than winners.

Thousands of fans are forced to miss the race and return home to fulfill work and other real-life obligations. Television networks lose millions of potential viewers by televising the race smack dab in the middle of a Monday rather than a lucrative weekend time slot. And tracks see their profits cut drastically by adding another day of overhead operational costs into the mix to ensure things go smoothly for fans and competitors.

Unfortunately, there's not much NASCAR can do to avoid such an unpleasant scenario. Rain or, in some cases, snow have postponed races for more than 60 years and until someone perfects an indoor track, the elements will sometimes be a challenge to every race.

However, there are a few steps to consider and one of them is the rotation of the schedule.

After starting the season in Daytona and then heading out to the West Coast, NASCAR comes back to the Southeast in early March and stays there until returning west again to Phoenix in mid-April.

That puts places like Atlanta, Bristol and Martinsville in the dicey situation of hoping spring weather comes early, and lately that has proved to be wishful thinking.

While Atlanta and Bristol were at least dry for the most part, temperatures weren't exactly balmy. And when the sun was out over the Martinsville weekend, things were comfortable, but of course that didn't last long as wet weather first washed out Friday's qualifying round before kicking back the main event to Monday.

Many track operators like Martinsville's Clay Campbell would like to see NASCAR take a look at the schedule and shift around some dates to ensure a shot at better weather.

"March, it's a tough time period here, so yes, I'm talking to see if there's any chance of something being done," Campbell told Hampton Roads.com about his efforts to push back Martinsville first Cup weekend of the season. "I don't know if there is.

"Years ago we were the last week of April. That's a good time of the year around here. I know NASCAR has a tough time juggling the schedule around because if they move one [date], it takes two to move. I understand that, and I understand that NASCAR has issues, too. It's not an easy thing to do, and I'd say the chances are slim of any movement happening, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't try to improve what we've got here."

With the impending schedule change coming either next year or in 2012 as Kansas Speedway gets a second date and Kentucky Speedway inherits a Cup race from another track, a schedule modification will need to happen. It provides a perfect opportunity to rearrange the calendar and make better sense of things.

While geographic overlap needs to be taken into consideration, it would make sense to frontload the schedule with events in the warmer climates of Florida, California, Arizona and Texas before bringing the traveling circus back to the southeastern portion of the country then spreading into the Midwest and Northeast as the late spring and summer progresses.

After starting the year in Daytona, bring the series to Las Vegas, which not only provides a chance at better weather but also brings the momentum of the season-opening race to a market that will capitalize on it much better than Auto Club Speedway outside Los Angeles has been able to accomplish in the last few years.

From there a trek to Phoenix would keep the series in the sunshine with a journey to California, either at ACS (if the track keeps two dates) or up in the northern part of the state at the road course in Sonoma next. Cap it off at Texas Motor Speedway and with an off weekend as well as the possibility of Easter falling into the mix. That opening segment of the slate would allow NASCAR to invade the Southeast in early or mid-April, offering a much better chance for pleasant weather.

There's never any complete safeguard in preventing a NASCAR race from falling victim to the elements. But the sanctioning body should look at every option to create a schedule that makes better sense in facing the elements.