If NASCAR's looking for a good way to spice up qualifying, they've already got the format ready to roll.But before we tackle that issue, Jimmie Johnson will lead off Saturday night's NASCAR Sprint All-Star Challenge at Lowe's Motor Speedway after he and his team dropped a fast time of 121.416 seconds in the three lap and four-tire pit stop qualifying process.
Johnson will lead Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth to the green flag for the first segment after one of the most-enjoyable ways to qualifying for a race the sport has come up with.
This system of qualifying, mind you, is nothing new -- though Tony Stewart seemed to think it was during his run when he left the pit box after the jack dropped the right side of the car, sped away, stopped and told his team "I'll be right back" over his radio before reversing back to the pit stall for the left side work to be completed.
The mistake left Stewart with a time of 137.788 seconds, good for 15th of the 18 cars that took a time.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin rounded out the top-five, but Denny Hamlin failed to complete his run after breaking the transmission when leaving the pits.
Why, you ask, was Friday night's qualifying so much more interesting to watch? The reasons are numerous, I'll warn.
For starters, the in-car cameras that are typically installed after qualifying were already in place for qualifying on numerous cars, which gave viewers at home a great sensation of how hard these drivers push the car through the corner on the qualifying laps. Case in point? Jeff Gordon's first lap left some on the table because he had to lift exiting turn four -- something we saw live during his lap from his roof camera.
As for the format, though, it tested not only how well a driver could hustle a car for a qualifying lap, but also how well he could sail the car into the pits without going over the speed limit. The differences in methods aren't something that a race broadcast always picks up and left you on your toes to see who could one-up each other.
Of course, the pit stop added a cool team element into the event, which is a great thing for NASCAR as it tries to promote the fact that pit stops and input other than the driver can have a drastic impact on how a team does. Some teams even adjusted their car's amount of grille tape during the stop.
The best, most exhilarating part, though was when drivers had to leave pit road. The rules allowed drivers to exit their pit stall without a pit road speed limit, meaning that the drivers had to get the tires to stick to concrete as they left the pit stall and then maintain control as they flew up the gear box.
Jimmie Johnson was one of the fastest to do so and hit turn one going about 119 miles per hour, while Mark Martin nearly spun twice while climbing through the gears. From there, it was off for a quick trip back around the track to the finish line.
So, NASCAR, why not implement this format into the 36-race regular season schedule? It beats the pants off of the typical one or two-lap parade around the track of the the current qualifying system. What's not to love about seeing drivers truly pushing the envelope on a number of different race situations?
Sure, there would be some issues involved and hurdles to tackle. I'd imagine that transmissions would break pretty regularly under the high strain, and most teams don't have their pit crews at the track until race morning. Time might even be a factor, though qualifying for 50 cars with roughly 150 seconds per car would take just over two hours.
Perhaps, even, the format could avoid the pit stop and just require the driver to complete either a stop-and-go or a pass-through on pit road.
Anything, really, would be an improvement over the old standard method of qualifying based on the fastest car over a one-lap average for a race that his hundreds of times that long.
All I know is that Friday's All-Star qualifying was worth the price of my couch admission to watch the drivers negotiate the challenges and seeing that each weekend would make Friday's at the track just a little bit more exciting.
