Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway moved up on Sunday

Trying to avoid rain in the area means that the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series will hit the track at Bristol earlier on Sunday.

Rain in the forecast at Bristol Motor Speedway means earlier racing — hopefully. NASCAR announced Saturday that it had moved up the start time for the Food City 500, aiming to beat the inclement weather.

The race was originally scheduled to wave the green flag at approximately 2:13 p.m. Eastern time, but all pre-race activities have been moved up by an hour. Thus, the FOX broadcast team will take over at 1:00 p.m. with the idea that the Food City 500 will get underway around 1:13 p.m.

Unfortunately, even moving up the race might not help. Weather Channel is calling for plenty of rain at Bristol on Sunday, starting with scattered thunderstorms as early at 9:00 a.m. The hours the race is intended to be run show percentages of rain as high as 100 percent, with the possibility of showers well into Monday morning.

We bring this up to note that there’s every possibility the Food City 500 gets bumped to Monday. That’s already happened once this season, when snow forced the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway to be run on Monday.

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So to review: You’ll want to be available to watch NASCAR Cup Series racing from Bristol sooner than you were expecting, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make backup plans to watch the race on Monday afternoon, just in case. We’ll have complete coverage of it regardless of when it actually takes place.