July 5, 2007
By Rebecca Gladden

Rebecca Gladden

Dear Sirs:

A lot of people love NASCAR, including me.

But there are things about the sport that annoy me, trouble me, even disturb me.

Topping that list right now is the top-35 qualifying rule.

And I can tell you this - the vast majority of fans agree with me.

You instituted the top-35 qualifying rule in 2005, at a time when the Brian France era was young and new rules and initiatives were being rolled out at record pace.

The rule guarantees that every top-35 car, ranked by owner's points, will race every week, regardless of how fast the driver's qualifying lap is.

With a total of 43 cars in the Cup field and 35 guaranteed a starting spot, that leaves only seven spots open to the remaining competitors.

Those spots are filled by drivers who make the race based on qualifying time with the final spot, number 43 on the starting grid, reserved for a current or past champion. If a champion's provisional is not used, spot 43 is awarded to the next fastest qualifier.

What this rule means for drivers inside the top-35, and more importantly, their team owners and sponsors, is that they are guaranteed a starting spot in the field regardless of their qualifying speed.

From your vantage point, the top-35 rule is a gesture of gratitude to the corporate sponsors who spend millions of dollars a year to fund the teams of your most popular and recognizable stars.

But to drivers and team owners outside the top-35 - and to the vast majority of fans - the rule is simply another indication that in today's NASCAR, money greases the wheels - literally.

The rule gives the perception that in NASCAR, money talks, and it talks loud.

Louder than common sense.

Louder than fair play.

And as Michael Waltrip pointed out in his blog this week, the sponsorship appreciation argument itself is no longer valid.

"Something that really drove it home last weekend at New Hampshire was the fact that Ginn Racing had two cars that were unsponsored that were guaranteed in the race and I had two that are fully sponsored and went home. The reason the top-35 rule came to be was because teams with full season sponsors were getting knocked out of races by one-off teams with little or no sponsors. The rule was intended to protect those cars with a full season of funding. Those days are long gone."

When Waltrip started his new three-car Toyota team this year, he brought with it some of the sport's biggest sponsorship names: NAPA, UPS, Burger King, Domino's, Best Western and others. Many of those sponsors haven't seem much track time this year, and it isn't entirely because of poor qualifying on the part of Waltrip's Toyota cars.

The top-35 rule means that a good qualifying run does not guarantee a driver outside the top 35 a spot in the race. "In only one race, maybe two, did I qualify outside the top-43 spots," notes Waltrip. "Yet I have missed most of the races this year."

Of course, Michael Waltrip is not the only driver complaining about the top-35 rule. Perhaps he is one of the most vocal, but understandably so.

And another concern over the fairness of the top-35 rule emerged last week when Brian Vickers, outside the top-35 in owner points, qualified for the race on time but failed post-qualifying inspection by a fraction of an inch.

Because the team was outside the top-35, Vickers was eliminated from the starting field and replaced by the next fastest qualifier. Had he been in the top-35, you would have let him race, simply moving his car to the rear of the field.

The bottom line is this: The top-35 qualifying rule hurts the sport by its appearance of impropriety. Your integrity is called into question when it appears that certain teams have an unfair advantage over others, and the top-35 rule clearly gives that impression.

It's stock-car racing's version of the Bad New Bears versus the Yankees, only in this case, there is seldom a storybook ending for the struggling underdogs.

It's a system that's counterintuitive to fans and counterproductive to the sport's image.

The irony is that on the one hand, you claim to be cracking down on cheaters and rule violators with harsh penalties and suspensions this year. You pushed the Car of Tomorrow into use, arguing that it would help smaller teams compete.

By contrast, the top-35 qualifying rule makes it look like you're talking out of both sides of your mouth, hindering the progress of struggling teams who are down in points but are still plenty good enough to race their way into the starting field.

So what do you say, NASCAR? Do what makes sense here: Take the top-43 qualifiers each week and let them race.

And if that is simply too big a step to take, here's an alternative: Keep the past champion's provisional for the 43rd-place starting spot, with its current limit of six uses per driver.

Divide the remaining field of 42 drivers in half. Give the top 21 in owner points the qualifying guarantee, and let the other 21 compete on time.

If Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart misses a race, then so be it.

They'll survive, and so will we.

You would be much better served in the long run by eliminating this objectionable rule which hampers fair competition and smacks of big-money favoritism.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.