Kevin Harvick says NASCAR needs to go back to a random draw for its qualifying order because the current rules effectively discourage competition.
Under the current rules, the qualifying order is set by the results of the previous week and current championship standings. Specifically, the metric is comprised of fastest lap time (15 percent), driver finishing spot (25 percent), owner finishing spot (25 percent) and owner points position (35 percent).
This matters because a slow start, especially for a season that began with two drafting tracks, can begin to compound a team’s performance. If you are outside of the top 25 in points, you’re likely amongst the first 10 going out the next week and likely starting near the back because the track picks up speed as the session goes on.
And a driver that starts near the back is unlikely to be scoring stage points and at the most risk of getting caught in another crash so a season can quickly derail just because of the qualifying metric.
“If you get into that hole, it’s hard to get out of it because it starts with inspection, you’re behind,” Harvick said on his Happy Hours show. “It starts with your garage stall. You’re later on the racetrack. Then your qualifying bid is almost set based upon your finish and your points. You can go forward a little bit with a good quality finish, but your points lag you down. I just think that the random draw would put a little more intrigue back into qualifying.”
So Harvick wants a conversation about this procedure.
“I think we should go back to the random draw,” Harvick said. “I think the rich get richer, and when you see the last car getting the pole, yeah, that’s great. With the random draw, it mixes the field up, it adds a little bit more of that intrigue to the qualifying order because it’s different every week.
“Now we’re going to cycle into qualifying order being very similar every week. If you’re behind, you have no real chance of catching up. I don’t know why we wouldn’t want people to catch up. When you go out early, the racetrack still has rubber on it from practice. The more cars that go out, it cleans the racetrack up, then the racetrack gets faster.”
This topic was also addressed in Monday’s post-race NASCAR column.
