Missed Opportunity: NASCAR Dashed Option Of Running Modified Tour Icebreaker 150 On Friday

It’s been a rainy couple of weeks at Thompson Speedway and as race fans around here know, the rainy forecasts are continuing for the area. April showers right?

But around those many gloomy forecasts was a fairly positive forecast for today in the Thompson area. That forecast was one Thompson oval track operators saw as a golden opportunity to run the NASCAR Modified Tour Icebreaker 150. 

Today’s weather in Thompson has hovered around the the low to mid 60’s with some sun and some clouds and zero rain in the forecast. Temperatures are expected to remain above 50 through the evening. What would seem to be as great of an early April day/night that you could hope for as a track operator in New England. 

But the hopes of track operators to jump on the opportunity to get the NASCAR Modified Tour Icebreaker 150 run were denied by NASCAR.

On Friday it was announced that the NASCAR Modified Tour Icebreaker 150 will be run at Thompson Speedway on Wednesday April 16. 

The event was originally scheduled for Sunday March 30. Due to weather concerns, it was postponed to Saturday April 5. With a forecast calling for rain for most of Saturday and Sunday this weekend at Thompson, the decision was made to move the event to April 16. 

The Thompson Speedway oval is operated by the partnership of Cris Michaud and Tom Mayberry. 

Michaud said he reached out to NASCAR officials on Tuesday about running the Icebreaker 150 today. 

“On Tuesday, when we saw the weather wasn’t going to be favorable for this weekend, we called NASCAR and tried to get them to run the event today,” Michaud said. “But they said they couldn’t do that.” 

Michaud said NASCAR didn’t offer a reason why it wasn’t a feasible option. 

“I just don’t know,” Michaud said. “I couldn’t tell you why.”

A NASCAR spokesperson said team owners were polled about the possibility of running the event today and the logistics of doing the event were too much to deal with for many of those teams. 

After this weekend the hopes of having any sort of makeup event at Thompson on a weekend were curtailed because of scheduled events on their road course. 

“In a perfect world we’d do it on a weekend, but we don’t have a perfect world down there at Thompson,” Michaud said. “Every weekend is booked down there for [the road course], as it should be for them to make money.”