HENRY COUNTY, Va. – Mother nature brought out the red flag at Martinsville Speedway Sunday.
Speedway personnel worked for hours Saturday night and Sunday morning to try to get the track ready for Sunday's races. But around 7 a.m. Sunday, the decision was made to postpone the races until Monday.
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As of 10 a.m. Sunday, the remainder of the truck race was scheduled to start at 11 a.m. Monday, followed by the cup race at 2 p.m.
The truck race was stopped before it finished Saturday afternoon due to rain.
"We were pretty disappointed, as this is our first trip to Martinsville. We were looking forward to seeing some good racing action here, so hopefully we will get to see the race tomorrow," Joy Hines, who drove down from Ohio, said about learning that the races had been postponed.
If the races are postponed again, she said she would likely not be able to stay.
She now hopes future spring races at the speedway are moved to a later date.
Victoria Billings drove to Martinsville Speedway from New York, in hopes of getting a break from the snow.
When asked Saturday what she thought of the prospect of snow at the speedway, she said, emphatically, "It sucks."
"No snow. But I guess if we had to pick snow or rain, I'd rather have snow," Billings said.
Like Hines, she planned to stick around to watch the races on Monday.
"We drive all the way down here. Of course we're going to stay. (We're) not going home until we see it all," Billings said.
Rege Appel came from Maryland to watch the races.
He was all for a race in the snow.
"It'd be neat to see. Hopefully Chase Elliot can get even with Denny Hamlin for what he did last year and we can all enjoy the race," Appel said.
Other fans, such as Jay Tapell, were more pragmatic.
"We were kind of hoping for not any snow at all, but we'll just kind of deal with it as it comes towards us or whatever. It's not really a big deal," Tapell said.
Vendors were hoping for racing on Sunday to help boost business.
Multiple vendors said Saturday afternoon that they believed the impending snow was keeping people away.
"It's a little slower, but we're selling a little bit of stuff today and we're hoping that the weather's better tomorrow. Hopefully this snow gets in here and it leaves and we don't have to worry about it," vendor Mike Bumgarner said prior to snow beginning to fall Saturday evening.
"It slowed it way down, very down. Everybody's scared they're going to get stuck here, so I'm just hanging out," vendor April Goodman said.
The last time snow postponed a NASCAR race was in 1993 when a blizzard postponed the race in Atlanta multiple days.