Patrick on qualifying: ‘Doesn’t always have to be exciting’ – USA TODAY
CONCORD, N.C. — Danica Patrick helped Charlotte Motor Speedway announce an old-school music act for the Coca-Cola 600 on Tuesday: ZZ Top.
As it turns out, she’s also a fan of another throwback: Single-car qualifying at superspeedways.
Patrick applauded NASCAR for announcing a change to qualifying at the upcoming Talladega Superspeedway weekend, saying the new format – single-car runs, except released at more frequent intervals than before – was much fairer.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver was angry with NASCAR in October after its qualifying format led to her boyfriend, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., missing the Talladega race. NASCAR then kept the same format for the Daytona 500, where it turned into a mess with a handful of crashed cars.
“I’m not gonna lie, one of the things I said to NASCAR after being frustrated last year at Talladega was, ‘It doesn’t always have to be exciting,’ ” she said. “Unfortunately, there’s no way around it. Crashing 17 cars at Daytona was not good for anybody. Maybe it was a little interesting, but by no means was it really fair.
“It just doesn’t justify the teams’ efforts and the amount of money they spend on cars and equipment and personnel. I think (the new format) is much more fair and while it’s not going to be quite as exciting, it’s going to be able to let the teams show the quality of their speedway cars and the people they have that put that together.”
NASCAR began using a new knockout-style qualifying format last year for all of its tracks, but it didn’t work very well on superspeedways. Drivers quickly figured out the fastest times would come by hanging at the back of a pack, which led to two problems.
First, drivers stalled as long as possible to leave pit road because no one wanted to lead the pack. That created several minutes of cars sitting idle with no action on the track.
And second, by running in a pack and coming up on slower cars, drivers got into more wrecks. Clint Bowyer went on a memorable rant at Daytona after being involved in one such crash.
So last week, NASCAR announced it would try a hybrid of the two formats for Talladega, but it has more of the older system than the new (there will still be two rounds of qualifying, but cars will run by themselves). The sanctioning body also said it would announce how it would handle Daytona 500 qualifying at a later date.
Patrick said a tamer qualifying session wouldn’t take anything away from the weekend.
“There are those fans out there that don’t mind the purity of speed,” she said. “They don’t need a great big show or entertainment.
“We have 36 events — so four of them aren’t stunningly, crazy qualifying like the rest of them. That’s OK.”
Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck
PHOTOS: DANICA PATRICK’S NASCAR CAREER
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