Sports are back. The collective sporting world took a big sigh of relief on May 17, when the NASCAR Cup Series ended a 70 day COVID-19 break and returned to action at the historic Darlington Raceway. Unfortunately, Mother Nature thought she was invited too.

Five of the first eight scheduled races have been affected by rain, including Wednesday nights Alsco 500 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Tropical Storm Bertha made landfall in South Carolina this morning and pushed her way up through the Charlotte area later on in the day. The heavy rainfall from the storm forced NASCAR to move the race back a day now as the race will run on Thursday night (7 pm ET/FS1/PRN). Also, as a result, Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series at the Bristol (Tenn) Motor Speedway will now move from Saturday at 3:30 pm ET to Monday at 7 pm ET on FS1/PRN. That’s due to FOX Sports not having enough turn around time to move their equipment to Bristol in two days.

This comes after the first NXS race back on May 19 at Darlington also being postponed from rain until Thursday, May 21. That race was even delayed by over four hours for rain as well.

The second Cup race at Darlington, the Toyota 500 last Wednesday night, was also affected, as they endured a 90 minute rain delay at the start as well as rain ending the race 20 laps shy of the scheduled distance.

Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 had a delay of over an hour due to rain as well.