Daytona: Qualifying Stupidity

Nascar butchered Cup qualifying today, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

53 cars showed up to qualify, spending a huge amount of money trying to get into the race tomorrow. Qualifying for the "go or go homers" was kind of exciting, as they battled each other for every 1/100th of a second.

Fan favorite Boris Said had an awesome run to put himself first, and possibly on the pole. Michael Waltrip had a rare great qualifying effort, and it looked like he would also get his NAPA car into the show for a change.

Then...The rains came. Who could have predicted that Florida would experience pop up late day thunderstorms? Well, practically everyone.

The stupidity of starting Cup qualifying at 4 PM, right before a scheduled 7:30 PM Busch race is mind boggling. With that schedule, even a 2 hour rain delay means that qualifying would have to be scrapped, and that is exactly what happened.

So Boris Said's time was washed out, he goes home. Waltrip goes home. The field is set by points, where the rich get richer.

Nascar should have started qualifying at Noon or 1 PM, to give plenty of time to get it in before the evening Busch race. The 4 PM time was bowing to the almighty TV gods, not taking into account any sort of plan for a weather delay, or the fact that there would be a huge field trying to qualify.

In the end, TV viewers were robbed of any drama. Fans are robbed of seeing deserving drivers like Said get into the race. Race teams are robbed of time, money, and sponsorship by spending huge resources on their speedway cars, then not even getting a chance to get into the race.

Nascar needs to take qualifying more seriously, today was a fiasco.