NASCAR officials didn't like what happened, or didn't happen, in the third and final round of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series qualifying Friday at Auto Club Speedway, ahead of Sunday's Auto Club 400. None of the 12 cars/drivers who advanced to the final round posted lap times in the final round, prompting NASCAR to set the top six rows of the starting grid by second-round lap times.
“I saw, obviously, what our fans don’t want, obviously, having the last 12 cars wait until they couldn’t get a time posted on the board and kind of making a mockery out of the qualifying is not what we expect for our fans,” NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller said. “It’s a little bit on us that we hoped things would go better than that. It’s an exciting show when they’re out there on the race track but obviously we have a little work to do on our part to get a little bit better format so things like that can’t happen. We certainly want to provide our fans with what they deserve and we and the teams didn’t do a very good job of that today, so we’re really disappointed.”
NASCAR's new aerodynamic rules package for 1.5-mile and larger tracks has resulted in drafting during qualifying, and drivers don't want to be the first on the track. Instead, they want to go out right behind other cars to get a draft off of them to post faster lap times. All components of the new package — larger splitters, larger spoilers, tapered spacers and aero ducts — have been used at two tracks, so far. Chase Elliott was the only driver among the top-12 to fail to post a third-round qualifying lap late in the round at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but at ACS on Friday, all 12 drivers to advance to the final round played the waiting game too long.
The Cup Series races at the short track Martinsville Speedway on March 24. Drafting will not be an issue there. But in an attempt to avoid a similar debacle ahead of the March 31 race at Texas Motor Speedway, NASCAR is expected to tweak its qualifying process.
“That’s their [NASCAR’s] problem,” Kyle Busch said. "It has nothing to do with the competitors. Don’t hate the players; hate the game.”
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