Change of plans

I was going to write a blog about NASCAR and debris cautions and Tony Stewart's comments on his Sirius Satellite radio show Tuesday night but that has been beaten to death. Instead, after watching Nextel Cup qualifying today, I would like to offer this comment.

&^&^^%%*&^*%^^%&%&%*&^*^())((&&*%%$^$!!!

What the heck happened to the 21 car? Time wise they should have made the race, especially when you have a car that started on the front row driven by a past winner at the track, but no.... some teams wanted to do race runs in practice and since they are in the Top 35 in owner points a lot of faster cars went home. This just doesn't affect the 21 but also the 55, 83, 22, 84, 09 and 34. All of those cars were one of the 43 fastest in qualifying but they have all loaded up for the long drive back to Charlotte.

I will admit to being a fan of Ken Schrader, a peak at the links on this page should tell you that. But he was fast enough to make this race as were all the drivers listed above. I know that if all the cars were going to qualify the 7 teams that received gifts this week would probably qualify anyway but we don't know that for sure until they get on the track. In the case of the 55 car, it was 0.009 seconds between him making the race and going home. Written as a fraction, that would be 9/1000. Try doing anything in that period of time. In fact, the difference between Paul Menard, who made the race and Schrader, who is going home was a quarter of a second.

I understand why NASCAR changed the provisional rules when they did and why they did it. But times have changed when you have 50 full-time sponsored cars showing up every week and these rules need to be changed too. Maybe make it Top 25 in points, or let the "go or go home" cars all qualify at once. It's been reported Michael Waltrip has to return $300,000 dollars to NAPA everytime he doesn't make a race. So far he is up to $2.4 million dollars. Is the deal the same for the UPS and Domino's/Burger King cars?

Anyway, I'll probably still watch the race but not really pull for anyone to win. I just hope no one is hurt and whoever ends up in Victory Lane is someone who hasn't been there for a while.