Before the Cup Series race at Richmond last weekend, the track went through about two hours of chaos, largely due to weather conditions. The Black’s Tire 250 had to be postponed, and insider Kaitlyn Vincie, who stayed back in Virginia for an extra day because of it, revealed just how “crazy” things got.
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At around 7 PM on Saturday, August 14, half an hour before the race was scheduled to begin, a storm hit the track, causing power outages throughout the facility. Lightning caused fluctuations in the electrical grid, eventually resulting in a generator catching fire in the television production compound.
Vincie, on Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast, revealed, “We had a weird situation happen with a fire in the TV compound. So if people were wondering like, if we were making this up, we were not. There was an actual situation that had to be handled, which was the first problem.”
Vincie had to explain what happened because, for fans watching at home, the broadcast suddenly vanished, leaving them wondering what was going on. While the emergency crew worked to put out the generator fire, the main scoring tower also experienced a short circuit, which caused a glitchy visual loop.
Amid all the chaos at the track, a fan also made things difficult for officials by climbing the flag stand. That’s when Vincie admitted that something about racing at Richmond really makes the fans go “crazy.”
NASCAR thought the weather had cleared around 9 PM, and the engines were fired. But within minutes, another huge storm rolled in. Around 10 PM, NASCAR decided to postpone the race until Saturday at noon, and Vincie believes it was the right call.
“So like once they got the TV compound situation under control, then a huge storm came in. And so I thought NASCAR made the right call of moving it to the next day because it just didn’t,” she stated on the podcast.
Thankfully, the weather had settled down by the next afternoon. Cup Series star Shane van Gisbergen started on pole position, but Kaden Honeycutt quickly overtook him and took total control of the race, leading 225 laps on his way to winning the Black’s Tire 250. Future 23XI Racing driver Corey Heim finished second behind him, whereas SVG had to settle for fourth place.
The bizarre fire and repeated weather delays made for a difficult few hours at Richmond, but Vincie’s account showed just how much was happening behind the scenes before NASCAR finally got the race underway.