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Was there anything wrong with the previous Bud Shootout qualifying format? Anything at all? It was so simple. Win a pole - you're in. Win the Bud Shootout - you stay in as long as you are a mostly full-time competitor. Simple. Easy. Made qualifying mean a tiny bit in a time when the top-35 cars are locked into the field.
In 2008 a few odd occurrences happened in qualifying...
- Ten, count 'em - TEN - qualifying rain outs meant only 15 drivers won poles, down from 18 the previous year.
- Thanks to the top-35 rule and GOGH cars showing up in qualifying trim while the locked-in cars did so in race trim, GOGHer Joe Nemechek won the pole at Talladega, edging out Tony Stewart at the end of qualifying.
- Patrick Carpentier won the pole at New Hampshire.
In August, NASCAR announced that instead of the Shootout line-up including pole winners - eliminating any incentive other than the small monetary award given for winning the pole - they would award the top-six cars from each manufacturer a spot in the field. What?
Now, at the time, Tony Stewart had already announced that he was buying into what is now Stewart-Haas Racing. Despite winning the Shootout three times, he was now OUT of the Shootout after taking over a GOGH car for 2009. So, I don't think you can call this the "Tony Stewart Rule", but consider that the following changes have happened to alter the field since they announced the new rules...
- The Chevrolets stay the same, with thre Hendrick cars and three from RCR.
- The Fords stay the same, with five (!) Roush cars and Yates Racing's #28.
- The Toyotas stay the same, with three Gibbs cars, the #83 Red Bull and the #00 (ex-#44) and #55 from MWR
However, the Dodges are an absolute MESS. Four Dodge teams were "in" when they announced the changes in August.
- Two Dodges from Gillett Evernham were in - Kasey Kahne's #9 and the #19 which went from Elliott Sadler to A.J. Allmendinger and back over a couple of weeks.
- Two Dodges from Penske were in - Kurt Busch's #2 and the #12 of new driver David Stremme, who will be racing while 2008 Daytiona 500 (and 2008 pole-winner AND 2002 Shootout winner) Ryan Newman will not.
- Although Petty merged with GEM, their #43 - now presumably driven by Reed Sorenson - is in the Shootout.
But here's where it gets interesting...
Chip Ganassi Racing and Dale Earnhardt Incorporated merged and announced they will be running Chevrolets. What did NASCAR do? They deemed that EGR, now a Chevrolet team, gets all of the cars from 2008 listed as Chevrolets, effectively knocking Juan Pablo Montoya out of the Shootout. Who is replacing him? Robby Gordon, who was the next highest-finishing Dodge. Do you know what make Robby Gordon is running in 2009? Hint: NOT A DODGE. A Toyota, in fact. So let's go over this again...
NASCAR removed a car that ran a Dodge in 2008 but is running a Chevrolet in 2009, in favor of a driver who had worse results (by the new qualifying criteria) in a Dodge but is running a Toyota in 2009.
What?!
And NOW, we get the announcement that NASCAR has changed the rules to let Tony Stewart into the filed as a "wild card". AYFK me? We're all USED to NASCAR bending the rules on a whim, right? (Even though I complain about it to no end and you probably do, too.) But changing them BEFORE THEY EVEN RUN ONE RACE UNDER THE NEW RULES? That's a new one even for NASCAR.
The sad thing is this all could have been avoided if they would have THOUGHT THIS THROUGH in August. Tony Stewart wasn't going to be in the field THEN. People were speculating about the economy and teams going under and merging and the car manufacturers having trouble in August - why change the rules to be MORE about the GD TEAMS and MANUFACTURERS to begin with? Why take the focus off the drivers - who AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE? Why make qualifying LESS important than it already was, which was hardly important at all?
What is NASCAR going to do NEXT year? What if a manufacturer pull out of the sport completely? What if a new one comes in - are you going to have a thirty or forty car Shootout? What if Richard Childress decided to switch to running Fords? (Yeah, that won't happen, but JGR went from Chevy to Toyota, right?) Why create a bunch of open-ended scenarios when the rules were already black-and-white?
On the plus side - just three weeks and WE'RE GOIN' RACIN'! Boogit-shutupDW.
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