Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog
In this series I’m going to point out 3 things that I feel NASCAR needs to fix before the 2008 season.
Part 1: Get Rid of The Top 35 Rule
The top 35 rule is destroying NASCAR. Fast cars are not making the show, and because of this rule other cars that actually do qualify (on the pole no less) are not making the show if the rest of qualifying gets rained out. This happened to Boris Said, not once, but twice last year. Also you are getting car owners who are abusing the provisional starting rules to make sure their cars make the show. Current and past car owners and abusers of this rule are Penske, Waltrip, Petty, and The Wood Bros.
Do I blame these car owners for doing this? No, not at all. Hey if they can manipulate the rules to their advantage, why not do it? I would.
So what should NASCAR do instead?
- First, get rid of the guaranteed top 35 starting spots.
- Then make all of the cars qualify on speed only.
- Bring back second round qualifying with one exception; only use it if the initial qualifying day is interrupted due to bad weather and if the second day is cancelled due to bad weather then revert to the setting the field by owner points - the top 43 that is!
- Let each driver have 4 provisionals to use throughout the year, and let past Champions have an additional 2 provisionals.
- The use of the provisionals is based on the old rules of using provisionals with two exceptions: 1) if you use a provisional to get into the race you can get it back for future races if you finish in the Top 10 for the race you used it in and 2) you are penalized 10 driver and owner points for having to use it which you can get back if you finish in the Top 10 for the race that you used the provisional in.
This would make the qualifying process more fair to everyone and still give teams a chance to make the race, even if they mess up during qualifying.
What do you think?
Part 2 will deal with the point system and Chase format.
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