Agile Tortoise
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43 of 44?
I guess there’s a lot of things I don’t understand about NASCAR. The big Samsung/Radio Shack 500 Winston Cup race is this weekend at the Texas Motor Speedway about 15 miles from my house. Around 250,000 people are expected to attend the weekend-long extravaganza.
I was reading the special section in the paper about the race, and found it very odd to read the sentence, “44 drivers will attempt to qualify of for the 43 race positions.” Hmm. It must really suck to be that 44th guy, huh? I mean, why not just let that guy be in the race, and forget the qualifying rounds?
I also think it’s funny that this race has a different name every year. The first year it was the Coca-cola 500, etc. At least the College Bowl games maintain some identifier along with the rotating sponsors, like the Nokia Sugar Bowl or something. There’s really no way of know what race is what, other than the Daytona 500 that keeps it’s name from year to year.
April 4th, 2002 at 9:47 pm
Greg said:
…why not just let that guy be in the race, and forget the qualifying rounds?
Perhaps if there was no process of elimination, people wouldn’t get a chance to see what the drivers’ have up their sleeves. In the current way, everyone has to try hard to quailify and thus maybe expose what lies ahead?
Don
April 4th, 2002 at 10:21 pm
On Thu, 04 Apr 2002 21:53:18 -0600, Donald W. Larson wrote:
>Perhaps if there was no process of elimination, people wouldn’t get
>a chance to see what the drivers’ have up their sleeves. In the
>current way, everyone has to try hard to quailify and thus maybe
>expose what lies ahead?
The best I can tell the qualifying rounds ( which are held tomorrow — race is Sunday ) are just an excuse to let the audience have a look at the cars and their favorite drivers…and hang out a couple extra days before the race drinking tons of beer in the campgrounds.
They’re a lot of side-shows at a NASCAR race.
Technically…the extra slot is probably pretty meaningless in most cases, because it’s entirely likely at least one team will end up having some technical difficulties that will forego their ability to race on Sunday, anyway.
g.