Rain is a four letter word that means qualifying!
Written by Rich Hemstreet · October 17, 2008
Nine times this year rain has washed out Sprint Cup Qualifying. In most of those cases the Sprint Cup guys still had one, or two, practice runs. Apparently not at Martinsville, unless they let them practice Saturday. NASCAR needs to make some changes to avoid this points only line-ups and starting grids. This is especially true during the Chase. NASCAR should at least have the twelve Chase cars qualify if at all possible. Even if it is done in lieu of the practice time everybody gets. These drivers should settle as much as possible on the track. Even if everybody had to wait till after the practice to figure out their assigned pit locations, it would be better if these 12 cars earned their pit assignments on the track. It wouldn’t take that long for NASCAR to run 12 cars through qualifying.
Even if it meant the top twelve qualified for their spots race day morning… it would still make it more interesting. Sure, it would still mean all twelve starting at the front of the grid, but it wouls give some of the lower guys in the standings of starting on the front row, and getting the preferred pit stalls.
This is just a thought. But I think too often NASCAR doesn’t really think out side of their 50 year old box. The Chase is only a few years old, so maybe they would still be open to doing things differently. I’m very interested in seeing how this race turns out. With Scott Speed running his first Cup Race on a difficult track. But hopefully his Craftsman Truck and ARCA experience has him ready for an ultimate short track adventure, Cup style.
As for the race, this will probably be Jeff Gordon’s last best chance for a victory this year, if he can beat out his Hendrick’s teammate Jimmie Johnson. Watch for Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch to all finish near the front. I imagine it will be Biffle’s brakes that end up holding him back. He seems to be awful hard on his brakes. A lot of cars are going to be losing a lot of sheet metal at this track, but very few will stay behind the wall for very long.
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[...] more about the problems that occurred because of qualifying being rained out. Rich has a column here where he talks about the amount of rain-outs that have happened this season and his suggestion for [...]