On lap 108 of last night’s Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway, we were hit with a 3-hour-and-8-minute red flag for lightning and rain. Unfortunately for some of us older folk, NASCAR would not be able to get drivers into their cars until 11:15 pm before going back yellow at about 11:45. Now, I pushed through it, and so did many other fans, including many at the track.

We were treated to some great, old-school superspeedway-style racing both before and after the red flag, but no one seemed to have anything for Ryan Blaney and his No. 12 team from Team Penske. Blaney won both Stages, led 172 of the 260 laps, and eventually won the race.

We saw 31 lead changes all race long, with drivers such as Ty Gibbs (32), Carson Hocevar (25), and Bubba Wallace (11) leading laps, among others. For such a clean race early on, we did get 7 cautions, including several near the very end. Despite those cautions, only nine cars finished off of the lead lap.

The lap 243 restart gave us what was arguably the best speedway battle for a win in many years. A multi-car battle between Blaney, Hocevar, Wallace, Bell, and even SVG before the 5 car of Kyle Larson caused the second caution in a row. Personally, I think we got robbed of one of the best finishes in recent memory. The final restart, however, wasn’t any worse. A fantastic 3-wide battle for the win came down to the final corner of the race, where Blaney inevitably got one hell of a push from Christopher Bell to score his second win of the season and his 19th career win.

We may have had a red flag that was only 4 minutes shorter than the entire race, but it sure was worth staying up until almost 2 am to watch.

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