A brief pause to say "What th--?"

And when I say "a brief pause," I mean "a brief pause in the Blob's down time."

Because by now, surely you've noticed its absence these last few days. OK, so some of you noticed. OK, so maybe one of you did.

Anyway ... the brief pause comes because I was sitting in a hotel room in Mackinaw City, Mich., Sunday night, and I was channel-surfing, and suddenly, whoa, here were Kasey Kahne and Brad Keselowski lining up in front of a handful of stock cars for a green-white-checker restart at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

First immediate thought: "What is this?"

Second immediate thought: "Is this the Brickyard?"

Third immediate thought: "Why are they still racing at (checking clock) 8:30 at night?"

A few seconds passed while they tooled around behind the pace car, and then a fourth thought occurred.

"Dang," I said. "Sure glad I'm not covering this mess."

Because once I pieced it all together, it was pretty much what I guessed: They had one whopper of a rain delay. I mean, a real whopper of a rain delay. Because it was, like, seven hours after this thing was supposed to go green, And still they were out there driving around.

And after yet another wreck (because, apparently, there were a whole pile of wrecks, which further stretched out the day) the thing still  wasn't over, and now it was almost 9 o'clock and the light in the sky was fading, and did anyone at the Speedway realize the headlights on NASCAR cars are purely decorative?

"Dang," I said again. "Sure I'm not covering this mess."

Anyway, I kept watching through that last delay, and they dropped the green again, and somebody crashed again ("Can't these guys drive?" I said), but Kasey Kahne crossed the magic line on the backstretch before the yellow came out, and so he won, a few minutes before sunset.

From the looks of it, about 12 of the original handful of people who showed up for this deal were still in the grandstands

I can't say I blame the ones who vamoosed. Apparently the whole day was even more of a crapshow than usual, pointing up once again that it's not the July heat that's turned the Brickyard 400 into the Greatest Spectacle In Staying Home, it's the ugliness of the show. And that isn't going to change because they're moving the race to Sept. 9 next year because the people running this thing think at least it will be cooler.

It likely will. Of course, sunset arrives at 8:02 p.m. on Sept. 9, as opposed to 9:05 last Sunday. Which means a couple of things.

One, NASCAR and the Speedway better hope it doesn't rain.

Two, if it does, they'd better hope these guys learn how not to run into each other in the next 13 1/2 months.

Otherwise ...

Well. Remember the essentials here.

Headlights.

Decorative.

The 24 Hours of the Brickyard  400, called on account of darkness.