Group drafting qualifying became a punchline yet again at Texas Motor Speedway, even though NASCAR had added extra rules in an attempt to make the system of qualifying run more smoothly.
Those additions weren’t enforced in some areas and didn’t help in others. It led to confusion and frustration at TMS. As a result, the sanctioning body is now looking at any and all options to fix qualifying. Those options apparently will include single car qualifying.
“We’re going to look at every option, including the possibility of going to single-car qualifying,” said NASCAR’s Chief Racing Development Officer, Steve O’Donnell in his weekly Monday interview on SiriusXM NASCAR’s “The Morning Drive” program. “The reason we haven’t is that’s on the teams. That’s parts and pieces. We’ve tried to be as efficient as possible trying this method of qualifying.
“But we’re definitely going to look at it and see what we can do. We’ve got a couple of weeks to do that. We’ll make adjustments as needed.”
Of course, the next track where qualifying would be potentially a problem won’t come until Kansas in May. So, the sanctioning body will have some time to formulate a plan.
