text: “In the simulator (Tuesday) I was looking at it, trying to figure out where you’d run through each corner and there’s not a great place to run anywhere. t’s going to be really interesting. I think it’s going to be very difficult if (rain) does happen.”
  Only three times in Cup history have rain tires been employed. Dale Earnhardt and Mark Martin used them in a test in 1995 at Watkins Glen. Teams practiced and qualified on rain tires at Suzuka in 1997 for the exhibition race in Japan. Rain tires were last used in Cup for a practice session at Watkins Glen in 2000.
  Bowman enters Sunday’s race with the best average finish (3.0) among all Cup drivers at the Roval. He finished second last year despite driving a backup car and having contact with Bubba Wallace on the first lap that sent Bowman to pit road for repairs.
  Bowman and Clint Bowyer are the only drivers with top-five finishes in each of the two Cup Roval races. Bowman goes into Sunday’s race seventh in the standings. He’s 22 points ahead of Kyle Busch and Austin Dillon, who are the first drivers outside a transfer spot.
  During Nate Ryan’s reporting for his detailed behind-the-scenes look at how NASCAR resumed its season after the COVID-19 pandemic pause, he came across a tidbit he couldn’t get in his story but passed along.
  Toyota’s engine shop is in California, but it could not open as soon as race shops in North Carolina because of state restrictions. That presented a dilemma for Toyota’s engine department if the NASCAR season resumed.
  “I lost a lot of sleep because I didn’t have control of my own destiny,” Wilson said. “Working on contingency plans to have to send guys to North Carolina. Richard Childress called me one day and offered up to partition his engine shop and let us work out of his shop. It’s incredible. It may be cliché but the sense of community that comes from crisis, because in the end we all want to be able to compete in a healthy manner.
  “It was very close to being ready to supply for the restart. I think we were able to open our doors (in California) May 4. It wasn’t that we were going to cut (Cup’s return May 17 at) Darlington short, because we had inventory on the ground at (Joe Gibbs Racing) already in the race cars literally.
  “Certainly there was enough on the shop floors at Joe Gibbs Racing that could get us through the first two to three weeks, but we certainly were approaching the point by six weeks in, we’re in real trouble.
  “We did get very aggressive, even after we reopened, because we didn’t know how long we’d be able to stay open here in California. Things got bad again. They started shutting things down again, and I was engaged with our county board of supervisors. I built a relationship with the mayor of Costa Mesa doing my best to politick and suggest that we were going to take care of our people, please, please, please don’t shut us down. Because it could have really impacted our ability to compete.”