The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway ended nearly two days after it started on Monday, thanks to NASCAR’s first snow delay in nearly three decades. But it was worth the wait, because with a few more feet of racing, the win probably would’ve been decided by a photo finish.
It was almost a photo finish as the No. 54 truck of Kyle Benjamin closed in on leader John Hunter Nemechek’s No. 8 in the final laps, and looked like he got close enough to give it a bump out of the last corner. But it wasn’t enough, and Nemechek won the race by a tenth of a second about 48 hours after it started.
Several late-race cautions set the race up to end so well, with the final restart coming with seven laps to go:
NASCAR started the race on Saturday, but pulled the trucks onto pit road on lap 23 when the weather started to get bad. The race didn’t restart, and snow piled onto the race track all weekend. With its first snow delay since an Atlanta race in 1993, according to NBC Sports, NASCAR postponed both the Truck Series and Cup Series races until Monday due to conditions and because it would have been a nightmare to bring fans to the track’s mostly grass parking lots after the snow.
The Truck Series finish was more than worth the wait after the race picked back up—at least, for the people who didn’t buy tickets and travel to the track only to have to go back to work Monday instead of watching it. That’s one of the biggest bummers about NASCAR’s weather limits.
But weather is a funny thing and NASCAR is the last series that would slap on studded tires to race in the snow, so this was one of the best finishes we could have realistically gotten. Hopefully the Cup Series will do the same, especially for the people hiding their computer screens to watch this stuff at work.