Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
Following Sunday’s Daytona 500 group qualifying session, NASCAR’s Chief Racing Development Officer and Executive Vice President Steve O’Donnell addressed the media. O’Donnell commented that NASCAR put together this format as a result of “feedback from the industry” in trying to make it as “exciting as possible”.
“We used it last year in Daytona for the summer race. We made some adjustments from there. Going into Talladega, obviously learned throughout that. Then came into Daytona with some minor adjustments for the Daytona 500, as well,” he added. “So if you look at group qualifying as a whole, we felt it worked really well, but certainly there’s some challenges on superspeedways. One of the reasons we moved away from single-car qualifying, I think you’ve heard from the drivers as well, a lot of things go into it as well, aero packages, different setups, not based on a race setup. You also heard Jeff Gordon talk about putting it back in the drivers’ hands more. That’s something we like.
We don’t want to see wrecks of any kind. Not lost on us how much work goes into these cars by the teams, the efforts for our biggest race of the year.
I close by saying I believe we’ve got a really good track record of making adjustments where we need to, so we’ll certainly evaluate what took place today, we’ll continue to get feedback from the industry, from the drivers as we did to get to where we were today.”
One of the things that O’Donnell mentioned hat they’re going to look at moving forward is what took place on pit road, with drivers sitting four, five-wide waiting, not wanting to be the first driver to hit the race track due to being at a disadvantage. He feels that’s something that they are “hoping to avoid” by possibly rolling the cars off of pit road behind the pacecar to start a session, or implementing some sort of rule that prevents it. He also added that they’re looking at ways to monitor blocking.
“Some of those were put in place, but I think those are areas we need to continue to look at,” he commented.
The package wasn’t a hit for many of the drivers in the garage, as expressed via Clint Bowyer in his rant and Tony Stewart on twitter. O’Donnell equates their frustrations due to passion as “this is the biggest race of the year” and understand that they “want to make the race”. He added that NASCAR will continue to have conversations with drivers to look for ways to make adjustments to improve the system. While they have fined drivers in the past for out of turn comments, O’Donnell says that none of the drivers will be facing any type of penalties due to their comments on Sunday.
The Daytona 500 traditionally has featured single-car qualifying on Sunday, followed by a pair of races to set the whole field with a unique format. Last year, that was something that NASCAR kept. However, this year, they implemented group qualifying for the Sunday. O’Donnell said NASCAR made the decision due to how wonderfully the knock-out qualifying system hit off last season.
“We saw some of the qualifying sessions move over from cable to network. Fans said they were really excited about it. We tried some things at super speedways, knew we had to make some adjustments,” he explained. “You couple that with conversations with a lot of the race teams about how much work and effort went into a single-car lap, how that didn’t really apply to the race, if there were ways we could put that focus on the racecar that was going to compete in the Daytona 500 versus a one- or two-lap qualifying session, that’s what really went into it.”
In response to the driver’s frustration, O’Donnell defended NASCAR’s position in implementing the system due to putting on the “most exciting race possible” and says that single-car qualifying didn’t fit with that process. The decisions that NASCAR makes are via input from fans, drivers, owners, and crew member as it’s a “balance” for NASCAR to make the right decision.
“That’s a little bit of how we got to where we are today, going away from single-car qualifying, taking input from all of those folks we talked about,” he added. “It’s a balance for us. Ultimately it’s our job to make a decision. Not always does everybody agree with that decision, but we’ve got to make that decision at the end of the day.”
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