Gold Standard

I thought some of you would enjoy reading this:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/index

Opinion: What's Fair?

This past weekend was the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway and the ending was one of the closet in NASCAR history, with Jamie McMurray edging out Kyle Bush. What I want to talk about is not the close finish to the end of another NASCAR race weekend, but the beginning of that race weekend. A weekend that had a few drivers and sponsors frowning and other counting their four leaf clovers.

Bud Pole Qualifying was rained out Friday, but not until a majority of the field had already made their two laps for time. It's becoming apparent that you have two types of teams: 1) the top-35 - who care less about qualifying because they are locked in the field and only focus on setting their cars up for race condition, & 2) non top-35 - who have to focus all their time on two laps in order to make the show, putting them behind immediately.

Well, before the rain started the top seven on the speed chart were all non-top 35 teams, including potential pole sitter Boris Said. With only 14 cars remaining NASCAR called qualifying and set the field by owner points (free gift for Jeff). By doing this it sent Boris Said, Jeremy Mayfield and Michael Waltrip home, with all three being in the top five speeds thus far - not to mention drivers Ward Burton and Mike Wallace, who didn't even get to make a lap - in essence a wasted trip to Daytona for those teams (I bet that was a high gas bill). On the other side was driver Brian Vickers, who qualified poorly but benefited from the bad weather - getting in the field based on his win from last year at Talladega.

Plus, what about Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamilin, Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer and many others? They didn't even care about qualifying - admitting it on Speed. The canceling of qualifying handed them front row starting spots...nice huh!

In your opinon, how can this be remedied?