NASCAR has made a call to mostly scrap its elimination-style, group qualifying format in favor of a return to single-car qualifying, the sanctioning body announced Wednesday. Group qualifying will remain for races on road courses. The format change is across all three of NASCAR's three national series and takes effect with the tripleheader weekend at Dover International Speedway that will culminate in Sunday's running of the Gander RV 400 Monster Eenrgy NASCAR Cup Series race.
"Well, we've all seen how group qualifying evolved,” NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller said. "With the teams all waiting until the last minute, being allotted a block of time and only taking advantage of the last two or three minutes of it, it became problematic from a content standpoint and also from a storytelling standpoint from the broadcaster and radio perspective and that it was very hard to figure out who was doing what when it was only like a two-minute session. A lot of times some of the pole sitters weren't covered very well because they were kind of surprise pole sitters or whatnot. That and just restoring general order.”
NASCAR transitioned from a single-car qualifying format to a group format in 2014, but the 2019 Cup Series aerodynamic rules package resulted in drafting in qualifying at tracks 1.5 miles and larger. Drafting in qualifying resulted in a waiting game played by drivers/teams as nobody wanted to go out first and being at a disadvantage to cars going out right behind them. That waiting game resulted in nearly all drivers/teams participating in a specific round of qualifying not going out until the final moments of that round. Drivers waited too long at Auto Club Speedway in March and the result was none of the 12 cars advancing to the final round posting a timed lap in that round. The desire to go out right behind the first drivers out also created a bottleneck at the end of pit road, preventing some drivers who wanted to go out from being able to get off pit road in a timely fashion.
NASCAR made tweaks to group qualifying, such as rules mandating drivers made attempts in all rounds to which they advance and prohibiting drivers from blocking other cars on pit road. But Cup Series officials still weren't happy with the result.
The new single-car qualifying sessions will only be one round, with qualifying order determined by a drawing based on the previous race's starting order. The top-20 starters from the previous race will draw for their qualifying order in the second half of qualifying. Drivers starting in the back half of the previous race's starting grid will draw for qualifying order in the first half of qualifying.
“To make a compelling show, we need to make sure that a car stands a chance to win the pole is actually the last car out,” Miller said. "We think that, typically, everybody that qualifies in the top 20 in an event stands a chance of sitting on the pole in a subsequent event. That was the pool we selected to come out of the draw of the last 20 spots to go.”
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