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?
posted by 4thsteagle at 8:18 AM
3 Comments:
This is one of the major issues that I have with the current rules in NASCAR. In NASCAR's viewpoint, they made the change to lock in the top 35 in owners points so that it would be more fair to the smaller teams and also protect sponsors who were investing alot of money in the sport with the teams.
Well, I don't think it's worked. As you mentioned, the majority of drivers do not care about qualifiying. If they are in the top 35 in points, they are already in the show and the majority of them only care about qualifying for pit selection.
Too many teams are losing an opportunity to make races. Basically, if you don't get off to a good start at the beginning of a season, you are fighting an uphill battle the rest of the year.
This is supposed to be an open sport where any driver who is deemed qualified by NASCAR can attempt to make a race. The only problem is, if they aren't a regular in the series or don't get off to a good start at the beginning of the year, it's a difficult journey.
I'm not sure what the exact solution is, but I like the old style of qualifying better. As I remember the old system, everyone ran on time and the top 35 times would make the field regardless. The next seven spots would be filled by "provisionals" which would be given out to the top 7 non-qualifiers based on their current standings in the points. The final spot would be the old "Champions" provisional with a limit to the number of times each season that could be used by one driver.
I think a system similar to this would be much more fair to the drivers that aren't in the top 35 in points and it would protect the teams that NASCAR really needs in each race (the one's with big money sponsors). The way I look at it, racing is racing and if you are faster than someone else in qualifying for a given race, you shouldn't be penalized with not making the race because you haven't had the same year long success as the other guys.
I think something like this would make all the drivers and teams focus more on qualifying and not so much on race set up from the start of the weekend. Poles mean nothing to the majority of drivers and I think it's because of the current rules.
As for this past weekend, I think those guys got a raw deal. NASCAR should not set the field based on points until the last possible minute. What would have been wrong with letting those other 12 or 15 cars make their qualifying attemps Saturday morning prior to the Busch race? I know NASCAR can't control the weather, but it would be nice to see them do anything possible to let qualifying be set on speed rather than points whenever possible.
I love the sport, but there are some changes that need to be made and I think this is an area that should be at the top of the list.
That's a good assessment - a little burdie tells me we may be looking at only the top 12 being locked in each week and everyone else has to qualify in. It would put almost everyone in harms way.
It makes it fair, but then you have the really rich getting richer & the middle/poor, well staying poor
NASCAR and college football have the same problems. You have the ones that "have," and then you have the "have nots."
< I already posted this once. What happened to it? >
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