NASCAR may resort to reverting back to single-car qualifying sessions for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races at tracks where drafting comes into play during qualifying, NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer Steve O'Donnell revealed yesterday.
"We’re going to look at every option, including the possibility of going to single-car qualifying,” O’Donnell said Monday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. "The reason we haven’t is that’s on the teams. That’s parts and pieces. We’ve tried to be as efficient as possible trying this method of qualifying. But we’re definitely going to look at it and see what we can do. We’ve got a couple of weeks to do that. We’ll make adjustments as needed.”
The 2019 Cup Series aerodynamic rules package for intermediate tracks [larger than 1.5 miles] has resulted in drafting during qualifying. That qualifying drafting has resulted in a waiting game among drivers, none of them wanting to be the first on the race track to be taken advantage of when others draft behind them to post faster lap times. That waiting game is followed by a logjam, a mad rush to get onto the track to take advantage of an opportunity to catch a draft.
The waiting game resulted in none of the 12 drivers advancing to the third round of qualifying making a timed lap before time ran out in the round at Auto Club Speedway last month. NASCAR responded by implementing new penalties ahead of the March 29 qualifying session at Texas Motor Speedway. If a driver failed to make a qualifying lap in a round to which he advanced, his qualifying times from previous round(s) would be disallowed, and he would start the race in the back. Also, NASCAR declared that a driver blocking another driver's exit from pit road to make a qualifying attempt would start the corresponding race in the back.
All drivers advancing to each round of qualifying at Texas managed to make laps in those respective rounds, with the exception of Alex Bowman, who wrecked in round one after making a lap good enough to advance to lap two. Clint Bowyer, though, felt he was blocked by Ryan Newman on one of his attempts to make an attempt in the opening round at Texas. Newman was not penalized.
“This is stupid,” Bowyer said. “Did that look like clogging the middle to you? I damn-near had to back up to go. That’s not clogging the middle, apparently. We talked about clogging our conversation before qualifying. It says really clearly in lawyers’ terms how you can’t clog the middle, and I be damned, the first time it clogs the middle, they don’t call it. Discretionary.”
Newman wound up starting the race in the back at Texas because of a different penalty when his car failed pre-race inspection Sunday.
NASCAR races at the short tracks of Bristol Motor Speedway and Richmond Raceway the next two weekends, and drafting does not come into play at those two tracks.
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