Since we last gathered, IndyCar has moved St. Petersburg to the end of April. Formula One is on the verge of delaying the Australian and Chinese Grand Prix. Portimão and Imola might both host grand prix in April. Portimão could pick up the FIA World Endurance Championship season opener in place of Sebring. Colton Herta will drive for Turner Motorsport at the 24 Hours of Daytona and one of his co-drivers will be Bill Auberlen, who once was co-drivers with Colton's father Bryon in the Panoz LMP1. Tristan Nunez has found a seat in LMP2. João Barbosa has found a seat in LMP3. Winners of the marathon stage at the Dakar Rally were Ricky Brabec (bikes), Manuel Andujar (quads), Yazeed Al-Rajhi (cars), Cristina Gutiérrez (light prototypes), Francisco López (UTV) and Dmitry Sotnikov (trucks). Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
Should Qualifying Die?
Over the last ten months, motorsports have had to adapt more to the circumstances of the world than ever before. Perhaps the only other comparable times were the two World Wars and the oil embargo, but what makes this pandemic different is series are still trying to go full throttle, competing in all the usual destinations and at the usual times while millions of people have lost jobs, millions more continue to adapt working from home, and business and schools are all shuttered.
Not to mention in most cases the grandstands are either completely empty or limited crowds are spread out as much as possible, with colorful t-shirts dotting the silver sea of metal.
With public gathering restrictions in place, every series put on events mostly for television purposes, but with no spectators and limiting contact between personnel, schedules changed, and changes were done to save money.
NASCAR stripped everything down to the basics, just a race. No practice, no qualifying (sans for the Coca-Cola 600), just the race and that was for all series. It created an unusual weekend schedule, especially for NASCAR, which maximized its three-day affairs. Friday was typically for qualifying with a Truck race as the night cap. Saturday would see Cup practice and the Grand National Series race. Sunday would be the main event.
Last year changed some of that. Sunday remained show day, but Friday competition disappeared for the most part. In some cases, Truck races and the Grand National Series races were run back-to-back on Saturday instead of running them on separate days. Overall, NASCAR likely had less television time in a season than at any other point over the previous 20 years. To go from easily five hours, in some cases six hours, of on-track coverage a day to in some cases none on Friday or just a two-hour Truck race is a big shift. But NASCAR made it work, and frankly, it didn't affect that much.
There were a few cases of teams having a minor issue throw off a race early that otherwise would have been caught in a practice, and there were the teams that started a race poorly because they got the initial setup wrong, but the races looked the same as what we had seen before. Sometimes you would get a surprise performer, but in most cases the top teams were on top.
With qualifying eliminated, NASCAR played around with setting the starting grid. Instead of going strictly on owners' points like it would for a rained-out qualifying session, it did a four-tier draw, breaking the 36 chartered teams into three groups of 12 with the top 12 drawing for the first six rows, the middle 12 drawing for the next six rows and the final 12 taking up positions 25-36 on the grid. The non-chartered teams were automatically relegated to the final four positions.
After the draw got tired out, NASCAR adopted a qualifying formula, taking into account championship position, finishing position from the previous race and fastest lap ranking from the previous race. This mixed up the grid more, but once the playoff started, the field was segregated with playoff drivers automatically given the top 16 spots for the first round with the best a non-playoff driver could start being 17th regardless how he did the week before.
NASCAR has been the only series to strip away all preliminary track time, and while its starting grid formula could use a tweak, it has raised questions about what sessions are worth having in a race weekend. I think there is a middle ground between NASCAR's approach and IndyCar and Formula One, which mostly kept the traditional weekend schedule with practice days and a qualifying session.
What matters the most ahead of a race?
Typically, we hear about grip and when a track is green that can lead for difficult conditions, especially on ovals.
While attending the Saturday of IndyCar's race weekend at Pocono in 2019, fog prevented the medical helicopter from arriving ahead of morning practice and cancelled that session. An early afternoon shower followed. Qualifying was scheduled for the middle of the afternoon before a late-afternoon practice, but the weather shook up the schedule and qualifying was canned in favor of having a practice session.
Practice was seen as more important for the drivers as the track needed rubber and the drivers needed to know how the changes to the universal aero kit would feel in traffic. The drivers didn't need a single-car run, they needed time with other cars around them and a practice session was more useful. IndyCar did the same thing at Gateway in 2019. When rain hit in the middle of the afternoon, it was decided a practice would be more useful at night than a qualifying session.
Each grid was set via points, and for longer oval events where there will be more pit stops, starting position doesn't matter as much. There is a lot of time in these races and plenty of chances for things to sort themselves out.
Qualifying has become an outdated and unnecessary session. In 2021, we don't need qualifying. For starters, entry lists are rarely oversubscribed. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part races don't need qualifying. Everyone that shows up races anyway and, if everyone is going to start anyway, we don't need to have one or two laps decide where everyone starts.
We are used to having a qualifying session because it determined who makes the race and who does not. We have kept it for all of time because we didn't think about doing anything different. We went through the processes even if this process was no longer needed. There are other ways to set a starting grid, none of which are any worse than the actual qualifying sessions we got.
Every race could be set via championship points or an inverse of championship points. If you are the best driver in the championship, you start first. You know what it will take. If you are a part-timer driver, you are starting at the back and you get incentive for being a full-time team. It is easy to understand. Previous race results are also easy to understand. Did you win the previous race? Great! You get to start on pole position for the next one. Or we could invert the field and a win in one race means starting last in the next one. New car to the grid, you get tacked on to the rear. A qualifying formula, like NASCAR's, could be used to take into account multiple factors.
Before you lose your mind, calm down. The Indianapolis 500 can keep qualifying. The Daytona 500 can keep its qualifying format with two qualifying races, though that might need a tweak.
I believe those events can keep what they do, but for every other event no one remembers qualifying. No one frankly cares about qualifying. In IndyCar's case, no one cares about the starting order at Texas or Gateway. In NASCAR's case, no one cares about the starting order at Phoenix or Michigan. Time and time again in NASCAR we have seen Kyle Busch or Kevin Harvick or Martin Truex, Jr. start dead last and be in the top 15 in a matter of 30 laps. We saw Chase Elliott start last in the Phoenix finale and he was in the top ten before the competition caution at lap 32.
While ovals might not need qualifying, road and street courses arguably need it for competitive balance. There are plenty of road and street circuits were passing is difficult, and having a driver start 19th at say Mid-Ohio for an IndyCar race because someone ran over him at the previous race while having a top five car is a bit unfair. That driver could make up some ground from 19th, but his result will be greatly different than if he was given the opportunity to start in the top five.
At the same time, arguably the most mixed up grid in IndyCar history was the 2012 Long Beach race where all the Chevrolet teams had to take ten-spot grid penalties for changing engines prior to the race. We ended up seeing one of the best Long Beach races of all-time. The grid penalties arguably made the race better.
Will Power won from 12th and Simon Pagenaud was chasing Power down in the closing laps, coming up 0.868 seconds short. Seven of the top ten finishers started outside the top ten. Four of the top ten finishes started outside the top 15. James Hinchcliffe went from 16th to third, Tony Kanaan started 19th and finished fourth. J.R. Hildebrand started next to Kanaan on row ten and ended up fifth. Ryan Hunter-Reay was third on the road from 13th on the grid, but a penalty for contact with Takuma Sato on the final lap dropped him to sixth. Rubens Barrichello went from 22nd to ninth. Only seven cars finished on the lead lap.
It was the third race of the DW12 chassis and the third race for the 2.2-liter, V6 engines. Honda and Chevrolet were still working through kinks. Chevrolet had a notable upper hand at that point in the season. Lotus was there. There were many other factors into the outcome of the 2012 Long Beach race, but the starting grid contributed significantly to what we saw over those 85 laps.
Formula One has been toying with reverse grid races for the last few years to set the starting order for the grand prix on Sunday, but no one has fully embraced them. It is the same reason why IndyCar would be slow to abandon qualifying on road and street courses. It would shake things up and make it difficult on the top teams, likes of Mercedes and Red Bull. Neither Mercedes nor Red Bull want to give the other an advantage. Mercedes does not want to be starting behind Red Bull in every race because Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas are first and second in the championship.
There are also tracks where it doesn't matter how good you are, if you are forced to start at the back, you are not going to make up much ground. At places like Barcelona, Monaco, Sochi, Abu Dhabi and Circuit Paul Ricard, if the Mercedes drivers started at the back of a reverse grid qualifying race, which I guess would last anywhere from 10 to 20 laps depending on the track size, they would be lucky to get close to the top ten and then they would have to start in the middle of the pack for the race.
At Monaco, Hamilton would be lucky to get to 14th in the reverse grid race. Then he would have to start 14th for the grand prix and he likely wouldn't have a crack at a podium finish. Meanwhile, Alfa Romeo could benefit from starting toward the front, holding up the field and at the end of Sunday Antonio Giovinazzi gets to call himself a Monaco Grand Prix winner.
I know people are tired of Mercedes' dominance, but I don't think having Alfa Romeo and Haas winning races because of track position is what people want either. I don't think people want a strategy equivalent to parking the bus in soccer deciding who wins any races in motorsports, let alone a Formula One grand prix.
With NASCAR changing its weekend format and practice and qualifying being limited to the five new tracks, the Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600 and the Phoenix finale, it has got me thinking about qualifying going extinct and how a monumental shift that would be in the record book.
When has any statistical category in sports gone dormant? If qualifying does go extinct, the qualifying records are going to be set in stone forever. Imagine if basketball eliminated free throws. Once a team got into the bonus, each foul would earn them two free points. Free throws are in the fabric of the game and it can be a strategically ploy to put a player on the free throw line (see hack-a-Shaq). If free throws disappeared, we would lose a crucial skill and one that dictates how a game is played.
To answer the question, should qualifying die?
I think there is a strong case that it should for oval racing, outside of major events like the Indianapolis 500 and Daytona 500. In most oval races, the important thing is getting rubber built up to allow for multiple lines in the turns. Until every NASCAR Cup race attracts 50-plus entries and every IndyCar race draws three-dozen entries, there is no reason to have qualifying.
On road and street courses, it should probably stay for the integrity of competition. There are some tracks where a qualifying formula or using a reverse grid qualifying race would mix things up and the top teams would still have a respectable shot at winning a race, but there are other places where track position and clean air are too vital. We could get races where the slower cars could hold up the field and possibly steal a victory. It would be a different result, but the race itself would be the same with position stagnation. Ultimately, it would not fix the problem, it would be the same problem just with different teams benefitting.
With the pandemic carrying into 2021, we are going to see series continue to adapt and be open to changes that they otherwise would have shied away from under normal circumstances. We could see more new ways to set a starting grid and someone could stumble upon the perfect formula or we may find what we have been using has been the best all along.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about stage seven winners from the Dakar Rally, but did you know...
The #33 2 Seas Motorsports McLaren of Ben Barnicoat, Isa Al-Khalifa and Martin Kodrić won the Gulf 12 Hours.
Class leaders of the Dakar Rally through seven stages with five stages to go:
Bikes: José Ignacio Cornejo
Quads: Manuel Andujar
Cars: Stéphane Peterhansel
Light Prototypes: Seth Quintero
UTVs: Aron Domźala
Trucks: Dmitry Sotnikov
Coming Up This Weekend
The Dakar Rally concludes with the final stage on Friday.
We have the 16th Dubai 24 Hour.
Supercross opens its season in Houston on Saturday.
There will also be the Chili Bowl.
