NASCAR makes history with rain tires at Montreal

Well, we kept hearing it might happen, but it never did, until now.  The rain tires actually were used in a NASCAR race.  The crews got three minutes to get the rain tires on, if the teams chose to, they could put the windshield wiper on.  Most teams did put on the windshield wiper, but some elected not to, for whatever reason.  I honestly don't know why they all didn't use the wipers, but I guess it's a teams or drivers preference.

Of course, the rain slowed down the pace of the race and it was funny at first that it didn't appear that they were going much faster than under caution speed, but as the rain slowed, some drivers got more confident and picked up their pace.  Marcus Ambrose seemed fairly confident in his car and those rain tires and had a pretty large lead for most of the race, but a speeding penalty hurt him and put him down to third, and almost a lap down to race leader Ron Fellows.  Then the caution for heavy rain came, a couple cars wrecking under caution, the red flag and then they called the race.

Congrats to Ron Fellows and the #5 team for the great strategy, it go them the win and they deserved it.  I would have liked to see it go back to green and see if Ambrose could get the lead back, but for once I do agree with NASCAR on the call to call the race.  I do think that if they had gone back to green Ambrose probably would have won, but we'll never know.

Edwards took over second in points over Brad Keselowski, but not by much, it'll still be a battle with those two to see who can get second when the season is done, I think Bowyer is going to win the championship unless they really mess up.

As far as the rain tires, I think they worked as they were suppose to and the best they could, hydroplaning is always an issue with water on the track even with tires that have tread.  Many drivers complained as it rained harder about hydroplaning and visibility, especially under that last caution, which caused a couple of mishaps for Logano and Villeneuve.  I think the visibility issue was the main reason NASCAR called it, although I'm not completely sure of that, I think that if the rain had slowed down they probably would have been able to finish the race, but visibility wasn't improving at all throughout the race.

Your thoughts?