Fast Friday Is Fun Again!
3/4/2014
PattyKay Lilley
I bid you welcome gentle readers, to something it's been too
long since we shared... a column that is upbeat and written to praise, not to
condemn. Good grief, that sounds like Mark Antony burying Caesar, and come to
think of it, that's okay. Recall, if you will, that by the end of that speech,
the folks he referred to as "Gentle Romans" or "Gentle
Citizens" had been moved by his words from hating Caesar and cheering his
death to loving the man they had lost and calling for the heads of Brutus and
Cassius. Nice work Mark; would that I could use my words that well.
So, what's she talking about anyway? She's talking about the first outing for the new "Knockout" qualifying system that so many feared, put down, indeed, threw down, stomped on and declared dead long before a lap had ever been turned in an actual qualifying session. We heard dire predictions of massive wrecks, start and park cars on the pole and other misconceptions, some bordering right on the edge of ridiculous.
Take it back! Take it all back! None of it happened, just as this scribe predicted it would not. Knockout Qualifying has been in use in the F1 series for many, many years. Being quite familiar with that series (Thank you Bob, for all the lessons and all I learned from you about the series I once had no use for. Rest in peace, my friend) I understood how it worked there and only hoped that NASCAR would do likewise and not try to upstage the best only to wind up looking like fools.
NASCAR, thank you! Really, though I hold your feet to the fire when you do things the fans consider wrong, this time you got it right! You got it all right! And the sessions at Phoenix were the shortened version for shorter tracks. Next week at Las Vegas, we'll see the full-blown three-round version of Knockout Qualifying and this old fan cannot wait! Do you hear that gentle readers? It only gets better! You see, sometimes change is good, but it has to be the right change. Changing anything just for the sake of change is flat out dumb. Would you change a dry baby? What for?
Much of racing at the Cup level goes back to the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Qualifying, my friends, was broken. I'm not sure when or why that happened, but I suspect it had a lot to do with the length of the tracks we see most often today. The most prevalent size in use by the Cup cars, as we all know, is the 1.5-mile oval or "D-shaped" oval as some are called. It should come as no surprise that the tracks offering the least excitement in the race itself would also offer the most boring qualifying sessions, and you can toss the 2-milers and the two giant tracks into the mix for good measure.
Watching a single car circle a large or very large track 2 or 3 times before another single car comes out of the pits to replace him, then repeat until all have had their turn at the fun is slightly less intriguing than watching cement harden, paint dry or grass grow. Someone at NASCAR... someone with a brain... looked at that and saw a better way, a way that was already tried and true, working just fine in the world's most elite racing series, Formula 1.
It's a bit amusing how so many fans that admittedly had never seen this type of qualifying suddenly felt qualified to tell everyone with whom they came in contact how horrid it was going to be, how all the drivers would be in back-up cars because the wrecks would be bigger than the Big Ones we see on the Superspeedways. This column and this scribe told anyone and everyone that would listen that it wouldn't be that way. I was assured over and over that it would be that way. Just watch.
Okay, I watched. I watched on Friday when the Cup cars took to the one-mile flat track at Phoenix in their first experience at Knockout Qualifying, and I watched again on Saturday as the Nationwide drivers took their turn at learning how it works. There were no wrecks in either session. None! There were a couple of spinouts, but those also occur in the single car style of qualifying.
So... first time out, nothing went wrong other than some of the drivers were asking for more time or a better way to cool engines between sessions or between runs within a session. NASCAR is looking at that.
**Note to NASCAR: Please... don't do too much tweaking. In this instance, being like F1 is a good thing!
What it was, gentle readers, was FUN! It was exciting, as the laps ran down, to see the urgency to bring a car back out that had been in that crucial top-12 but had just been knocked out. Next week, it will be three sessions instead of just two, and I'm already kind of wishing they'd rethink that and make them all three-session runs... just like F1.
Back in the days when we were going to races, we mostly frequented the short tracks and qualifying on those moved so fast you didn't have time to be bored. The one really big track we visited often was Pocono... because it was the closest, and I promise you there is nothing more boring than single-car qualifying on a 2.5-mile flat track... and that includes Indianapolis as well when we're talking stock cars. We went because we could. Hubby had the time off and we enjoyed the experience of being at the track. We ALWAYS had pit passes at Pocono, and quite honestly spent most of every qualifying session in the infield making friends and having a ball. As I said, qualifying there was boring. Being at the track with all the other fans was a blast!
With the knockout qualifying in play, it won't be boring anywhere. Hopefully... and I do mean that, it will draw many of our younger fans to the track on qualifying day. It is part of the race experience gang, and you really should try it. This time, NASCAR got it right, and this old fan offers right here and now an honest and most heartfelt THANK YOU! Fast Friday is once again Fun Friday! Let's make it Fan Friday as well! To all my Twitter friends, #FF!
Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
~
PattyKay