Qualifying

Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon on the Front Row of the Daytona 500
for Sunday
Photo Credited to jacksonville.com

WHAT HAPPENED
I will not normally be posting about qualifying this season. However, with the controversy that we saw on Sunday I feel like something needs to be said about the incident. There certainly is a 50/50 mix of fans that loved the qualifying set up and the others hated it. The drivers however, they all hated it, well except Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. However, to be honest there were only going to be two drivers that thought the system was pretty good at the end of the day. It all really started when Clint Bowyer and Reed Sorenson collided and crashed into the outside wall together. Bowyer then proceeded to get out of the car and yell at Sorenson but later stated that it was not his fault. However, the damage was done and it ended up with several different cars on the rollback. When Bowyer came out of the care center he talked to the media with anger and expressed that NASCAR had a bad system in his eyes and expressed on radio how they should go back to what worked in the past. None the less, there is two guys for Hendrick Motorsports that are happy guys and are happy with the system that is in place.

IN MY OPINION

The accident that happened in qualifying on Sunday created a lot of
controversy about how qualifying should be run
Photo Credited to latimes.com

It has to be hard to go out there and make a lap only to end up in the wall with a torn up car your guys have worked with for so long. Clint was very fired up about that and has a right to be since he is put into a horrible spot with a torn up race car. Let's all be honest, there is something wrong with the system. However, I do believe that group qualifying is the future of NASCAR plate track or not. There needs to be some rule changes such as, if you leave your pit box you must go strait onto the track. If you stop on pit road it is a drive through penalty and times are disallowed until you come in to serve that penalty. However, that does not fix the problem with Sorenson and Bowyer. That is a tough call and I think that it was just a racing thing. It was a situation where one guy needed to get into the biggest race of the year and another situation where a guy was trying to set himself up into a great position to win on Sunday. Reed was trying to stay in front of Clint to keep his speed up so that he has a better chance to get into the show There is a way to fix this, well somewhat. Put those who are racing to get into the show into a separate group. Sure you may have to run three groups instead of two, but that may be a price to pay to make sure something like this does not happen in the future. It will created an opportunity for those guys to race themselves hard and if something happens between them, well it does not hurt those guys who are trying to go out and win the race. The system is broken, however, there is an opportunity to be able try and fix what is broken instead of just scrapping everything that they have now.