| Published: N/A |
| Date: January 2008 |
| Section: Sports/NASCAR/Opinion |
| Comments: |
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By: Ian Essling
Congratulations, NASCAR. In another attempt to "level the playing field," you've only succeeded in making it worse.
No, I'm not talking about the insane Car of Tomorrow debacle. We all know how well THAT worked last year, you know, NASCAR's whole idea of helping the little guy was obviously embodied by one team winning half the races and once proud organizations (Morgan-McClure, not Ginn, mind you) closing their doors.
No, I'm talking about the New Top-35 qualifying rule. This is the one that now dumps all the "go or go home" cars together at the end of a session. Ostensibly, this rule will bring parity to the cars that are on the outside looking in (for brevity's sake, I'm calling all these non-top-35 cars the 'Outsiders' from now on).
In 2007, the war of the Outsiders raged every week; with a dozen fully funded teams fighting for seven or eight spots, hundredths of a second could mean the difference between making the race and packing up and going home. What ended up happening, however, was that when some Outsider teams went early in the session, those that went at the end easily beat the first group's times and made the races. This sometimes led to what were referred to as "inferior teams" (read: non-Toyotas) beating "well-funded teams" (read: Toyotas).
Of course, the cry of foul came from many directions; some of the Outsider teams themselves (again, read: Toyotas), fans, the insanely drama-addicted ESPN commentators and of course, NASCAR itself began to get a bit worried when their buddies in TRD began to complain that their uber-teams weren't making the races. That's speculation on my part.of course.
So, NASCAR, true to form, has had another knee-jerk reaction, and presto, we have a new rule. Now, all the Outsiders will take their qualifying times at the end of every session, which is, for most tracks, when the faster times will be gotten. By grouping all the Outsiders together, they think it's more "fair."
What they failed to consider is that now there will be a disproportionate amount of "go or go home" cars qualifying too high in the field. On top of taking away higher starting spots from the cars that actually earned them, it's dangerous for everyone involved, because you have these slow cars getting artificial boosts in time by virtue of this "bye" to qualify at the end of the session.
We saw at a couple races last year what happens when a really bad car turns a good lap at the end of a session and starts up front, and it's not pretty.
What NASCAR needed to do was change the top-35 rule to a top-20 rule. Open the field up, take away more protected spots, and then there wouldn't be so much of a problem. This whole meddling with the random order of qualifying is going to have some serious implications down the road, mark my words on that. Does an Outsider car that wins the pole by virtue of going out late ACTUALLY win that pole? Or is the pole given to the fastest car that was not handed a late draw on a silver platter? As I said, it's going to be a mess.
Of course, NASCAR will never reduce the top-35 to a top-20, even if it would create more drama and better racing on Fridays. Because as much as NASCAR loves to manufacture drama, there's only one thing they like more: sponsorship dollars. |
