The insanity didn’t end at Daytona this time. As much as qualifying was horrendous there, a new wrinkle at Atlanta caused as much chaos. This time, former champions could not get through inspection to qualify on Friday. Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth, and Tony Stewart didn’t make the cut and will start far back in the field. Much of it had to do with camber, according to several sources. It seems that some teams were pushing the envelope.
In the meantime, Joey Logano won the pole and Kevin Harvick was second. Sound familiar? Regardless of that, the big story was that four drivers with 13 championships couldn’t qualify. Never mind that Reed Sorenson or Mike Wallace didn’t qualify, it was those champions that had everyone in an uproar. Never mind that they didn’t meet the rules, it was Jeff, Jimmie, and Tony. How could they? Some said it was because there wasn’t enough time. Never mind that NASCAR delayed qualifying over 15 minutes despite having television waiting for it to begin. Gordon said it had to be something wrong with the laser technology or who knows what else, but the bottom line from NASCAR was that some cars and teams (no names mentioned) were trying to push the rules to the limit and it didn’t work, that everyone was treated equally, and it was their job to enforce the rules. Just as it should be, in this writer’s opinion.
So, what we have to get from this is this is a qualifying is problem. Once upon a time, when cars went out and ran single laps and the starting field was determined that way, things went smoothly. The three-hours (or two hours, to be realistic) of cars running time trials wasn’t good enough for TV. I don’t know the real story and wasn’t in on the negotiations, but somehow NASCAR decided to make qualifying exciting. The theory was that more people would be in the stands and more would watch on the tube if it was made “interesting.” It seemed to work out last year, but this year it has been a disaster.
This writer’s has never been much on qualifying, as I stated in my original post last week. Line them up and see what happens in the race has always been my motto. Any tricks that are designed to attract fans and televisions seldom work. I’ve seen the “crowd” at tracks and people don’t seem to turn out like I thought they would. Maybe the sanctioning body should place their effort on the race experience instead of qualifying. I see evidence of that, but so far, it’s been more about that than the race. Of course, television rules, so that argument is futile.
