As the rain continued to fall on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve last Saturday, Nationwide Series director Joe Balash was faced with a unique decision -- whether to give Goodyear's racing rain tires a go or sit it out.

The decision was made to send the field back on the track, and Balash admitted he wasn't sure what might happen next.

"I had a high level of confidence that the product that we had -- the rain tires -- was going to be a good product on the racetrack," Balash said. "I spent a lot of time talking with Goodyear about the tires, and the management of our tire inventory as we've carried it from event to event.

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"I think everybody saw that the tires performed flawlessly in the rain.

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-- JOE BALASH

"But there's always that unknown. And until you see the cars going into the first turn and snaking around the racetrack -- and this is a pretty technical racetrack -- on water, it changes that."

The field took the green flag and racing resumed, and instead of a multi-car pileup, it immediately became apparent that NASCAR drivers could control their vehicles under wet conditions.

"When you have a field like we had, with a lot of full-time Nationwide Series drivers, who are young and they haven't had a lot of experience in Nationwide Series cars, let alone on a road course in the rain, there's a little anticipation there," Balash said. "But I think at the end of the day, it really showed that they're very talented drivers who deserve to be racing here."

Balash said one of the lessons learned by NASCAR in its first major foray into racing in the rain was judging the amount of water on the track.

"[It's] looking at water management on the racetrack and making sure that the racing surface is going to be ready for the cars to come out," Balash said. "We learned a lot of information about that. We had some extra people around the track, looking at the surface for us. And besides our two pace cars, we had a third vehicle that could go out and take a look at the racing surface for us. That helped a bunch."

When the field was brought in under the first red flag to switch to the rain tires, teams were given a three-minute window. But that stretched to more than eight minutes as NASCAR officials wanted to make sure everyone was ready to resume racing.

"We've had a plan in place since we decided to go to rain tires, on what we wanted to do procedurally," Balash said. "As the plan unfolded, we were on the cautious side because this was our first-ever event where we were running the rain tires with the Nationwide Series.

"We were a little conservative on the front end. We wanted to make sure that things were more perfect than they probably needed to be. But we felt that we needed to take extra time to make sure we didn't have any big puddles or standing water, and the teams took extra minutes to make sure everything was OK on the car before we went back out."

Balash felt the decision to stay somewhat conservative was the correct one.

"It added a little time to the event, but I think it was time well-spent being cautious," Balash said. "Once we got back to racing, I think that we saw that we really have some people that have talent running on rain tires in the rain."

"The rain tires themselves really exceeded everyone's expectations," Balash said. "I think we heard there were concerns by some drivers before the event. I think everybody saw that the tires performed flawlessly in the rain. I think my first check-box right there is how our tire inventory actually performed on the racetrack in live racing activity, and it did very, very well."

So in the future, if Balash finds himself facing a similar decision, he now has past experience to fall back on.

"Just going through the whole event gives everybody a comfort level, because we've never experienced it before," Balash said. "It's like the logistics of coming to Montreal the first time we did it. Until you actually experience it, you have to learn your decision-making process. And that's what we learned from it today."