How did Austin Dillon win the pole in the Talladega without clocking in a single lap?
NASCAR currently uses in group car qualifying session replacing the performance metric system used during the Pandemic.
Follow Us
Austin Dillon
The qualifying sessions of the 2019 NASCAR Cup season were a few of the most farce events ever to take place in the series. The sanctioning body’s bid to add excitement to the qualifiers of the stock car racing events prompted the bizarre situation, which backfired. The single-car qualifying sessions were boring and tedious.
NASCAR introduced group qualifying in the 2014 season, replacing the traditional single-car runs. It never was the financial success they hoped it would be, as drafting and similar practices made it worse. It peaked at tediousness in 2019 following the introduction of new aero packages of the 6th-generation cars. The tweaks to the car made it impossible for the first driver to hit the track during qualifying to secure the raw front spots.
Teams found a loophole in the sport’s laws and remained in the pitlane until the end of the qualifying session before trying to clock in their times. In the Talladega regular-season Cup race of 2019, the drama intensified as all 12 drivers in the final round failed to clock in a lap in the session. Austin Dillon, who clocked in an official time of 0.00 seconds like everyone else, was awarded the pole.
NASCAR broadcasting partners, Fox and NBC, forced it to return to the single-car qualifying as they found it more broadcasting worthy than the driver’s game. NASCAR, ahead of the Dover race of that season, announced that it was going back to the more technical but dull format of single-car qualifying. Then JGR driver Kyle Busch won the title, which was second and last to date.
NASCAR was furious that they were forced to change the decision, and senior vice President, Scott Miller, didn’t hold back his disappointment during the announcement. He said, as reported by USA Today:
The teams are always going to do what benefits them the most, and unfortunately that was waiting, drafting. It wasn’t a very compelling show. We owe it to our fans to provide something worth watching. I don’t think anybody is at fault. It is something we tried, to try to provide a good show, we were optimistic and it didn’t work out. Maybe we should have been more proactive, maybe they should have been active. Whatever.
NASCAR has a more complex but less controversial qualifying system now
NASCAR was forced to use a performance metric for qualifiers in most of the races at the end of 2019 and the whole of 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Ahead of the 2021 season, they came up with a more foolproof system that resembled the dropped group qualifying system.
Now the drivers are split into two groups based on their finish in the previous race. Drivers who finished in odd-numbered spots will be in one group, and drivers who finished in another group, named Group A&B.
Depending on the track, the group will run separate qualifying laps in a given period. The top 5 finishers of each round will go against each other in the final round. The drivers who fail to progress to the next round will be ranked based on their times.
Discover more:
Stay Updated!
Justin P Joy
(4859 Articles Published)