Originally Posted By: Shannow
Thanks bdcardinal...sounds like motorised rollerball.
You need a Toohey's top ten shootout to liven the crowd up.
They used to do single car qualifying, and switched to the group thing first at the two road courses in 2013, then in every track except Daytona and Talladega last year. They did the group qualifying at the Talladega fall race last year and it was just as bad a cluster as it was this weekend at Daytona. there were cars that didn't qualify for the race because they timed it wrong and never set a lap time.
The group qualifying things works great at every track except Daytona and Talladega. The simple fact that you need to run in a pack to make speed increases the crash danger exponentially.
Daytona 500 qualifying is already complicated enough. they allow in a max of 43 cars, and usually somewhere around 50, this year 49, show up to qualify. What had always happened was single car qualifying was done the Sunday before the race. That session set the front row and then set the starting places for the "Budweiser Duel" races held the Thursday before the race. In those races, the field is split into two smaller groups and they each run a 150 mile, 60 lap, qualifying races. Out of those races, the 15 top finishers each qualify for the Daytona 500. Then they take the top 4 cars who set the fastest single car qualifying times who did not qualify on Sunday or in their Duel race. The balance of the field at that point is set by provisional spots determined by car owner's points from the previous season and a previous series champion provisional.
The change this year took the single car qualifying on Sunday and changed it to a group knockout qualifying. They still do the whole Budweiser Duel thing on Thursday and they still keep the 4 fastest times from Sunday. Confused yet?
Normally this is not an issue at the other 35 races because only 43-45 cars show up so it is more cut and dry. The champion's provisional was added in the 80s after Richard Petty did not qualify for a race. NASCAR could not fathom having their King not be in a race. Then the max field size was 42, so they changed the official rule to be 42+1 prior champion. Occasionally you have a prior champion who is semi retired, and will run only a handful of races, so it assures them they will qualify. The strange caveat to the rule is that is the "most recent prior champion who failed to qualify" so if you had Bobby Labonte, 2000 champion, show up and then lets say for some reason Tony Stewart 2002, 2005, 2011 champion, failed to qualify, he would get the provisional instead of Labonte.
