New Trial: Format Is Good in Many Ways for NASCAR, Fans

By Ron Lemasters Jr.

Welcome to Friday Night Fights…or at least, Friday fights.

With the announcement that NASCAR has changed its qualifying format from single-car runs to group sessions over 50 minutes, with appropriate knockouts, it’s going to leave some folks sorry and sore when it’s over.

In short, you’re going to see the present-day equivalent of short-track heat races, albeit without the ceremony, and some gamesmanship to boot, all packaged in a made-for-TV time frame. No more “well, we’d have been fine if that cloud hadn’t come over later in the session,” or “we were just way too tight today” comments from drivers after a lap.

It’s going to be more like racing, and it will mean that drivers and crew chiefs will have to develop a new process for dealing with it. 

Excellent.

For tracks at least 1.25 miles in length, the first session will include all cars for 25 minutes. The 24 cars that post the fastest single lap (among all their laps) will advance to the next round. The second round will be 10 minutes, with the 12 fastest single-lap drivers advancing to a final five-minute round. The drivers who do not make the final round will start in positions 13-24 in the race.

There will be a five-minute break between each qualifying round.

For tracks less than 1.25 miles in length, there will be two sessions — a first session of 30 minutes with the top 12 advancing to a 10-minute final round to determine the pole. There will be a 10-minute break between the qualifying rounds.

“We believe the timing is right for a new qualifying format across our three national series,” NASCAR Vice President for Competition Robin Pemberton said. “This style of group qualifying has all the makings of being highly competitive and more engaging to our fans in the stands and those watching on television and online.

"For the drivers and teams, we believe this new qualifying will fuel even greater competition leading into the events,” Pemberton said. “Additionally, it provides our tracks, broadcasters and other key partners with a greater opportunity to develop more entertaining content for our race weekends.”

Therein lies the key. Qualifying in the old format was exciting, in its way, but it wasn’t anything like this will be. Track operators know they have a show now, instead of a parade, and they’ll be quick to add tickets and events to support it.

Pemberton said that cars can come and go off pit road as many times as they like, as long as they don’t make changes to the car. And there’s just one set of tires for the whole qualifying procedure.

As for gamesmanship, Pemberton looked that one over as well.

“As always, we'd like to leave it in the competitors' hands to conduct themselves properly during these sessions,” he said. “We will always have the ability to make a call when we have to, but at this point in time, we are not anticipating any problems.”

They may not be anticipating it, but it will come up. It’s not that hard to balk a driver on a flying lap, and the line between intentional and unintentional is blurry to begin with.

At the end of the day, it’s about making Friday or Saturday a better show, both at the track and on TV.

“We evaluate a lot of things over time, and this is one of those that if the timing is right for us and we believe that the fans will be receptive to this,” Pemberton said. “All the ones we've talked to so far think it's a great idea.  The competitors think it's a great idea.  It gives us an opportunity to get two or three rounds of qualifying in per event.

“I've got to believe it's better for any of the sponsors.  It's better for Coors and Keystone, and it's going to be a better show for TV and the people at home will have a better opportunity to watch these guys qualify.”

The tracks, as mentioned above, will like it, especially places like Indy, Pocono and Talladega, where qualifying can take a very long time.

“I think any time you can add content, it's better for the tracks,” Pemberton said. “You know, it's better for all of us.  One of the things that this format will allow us to do, if you remember the times that we had qualifying sessions that take extended length of times, 90 minutes, two hours to get an entire field qualified one car at a time.  What this will allow us to do if we get weather that sets in, it will allow us, if we have the time and if all cars run during that first session, it will allow us to set the field in a 25-minute session.  So this will be the advantage of the competitors to get that in.”

The added dimension of the new format, especially at plate tracks, is the possibility that the Big One crops up during the session. Pemberton said, essentially, that those things do happen.

“It's not unlike any Happy Hour that we've had or any other situation,” he said. “We have race cars on racetracks, and sometimes you have those situations arise.  It's just a situation and you deal with it.  If you look at the practice sessions at Talladega last year, teams went out there and hedging their bet that qualifying would get rained out.  They drafted as such that they knew they were hoping that the lineup would come out of that, and it did.  These are good drivers and they're professionals, and they take risks.  They also know it's qualifying and not the race.”

Asked how he, as a former crew chief, would change his strategy, Pemberton played it cagey.

“It's hard to -- my reaction would be that this is pretty cool for a number of reasons,” he said. “One, I feel like in the event that we may get rained out that a short 25-minute session or 30-minute session, and we can get the whole field sorted.  I think that's better for all of the competitors.

“But if I was a crew chief I would say it gives me a good opportunity to get good laps in.  I think as we move through the season it will take on a life of its own at different places where they will have different strategies, whether it's working on the race set-ups, or if they want to be aggressive in one round or kind of lay-up in the other round, saving tires to just squeak into the final round and have the best tires.  Comes to mind what you would have to do with tire management for California Speedway or Atlanta, Homestead and some others.  I think there are opportunities there for different crew chiefs to take advantage of some of these situations.”

Buckle up, y’all. It’s about to get a whole lot more interesting at Phoenix in about five weeks.