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The Fall Nationals on Saturday night had some great racing but I really felt like I didn't get to see the race I had come to watch. I expected to see the 24 best cars of the weekend come out to battle for the championship title in the A main event. Instead, it appeared to me, a fairly random group of cars hit the track. I know that the rain out on Friday night created a challenge for everyone involved with the race but the decision to completely disregard the results from Thursday night was very disappointing to me.
By my unofficial calculations only one car from the top ten in points after Thursday night made it into the top ten on Saturday. Only three of the top ten cars even made it into the top twenty... Here are a few examples: BK 1st in points after Thursday night started 8th in the B, Bud Kaeding 2nd in points Thursday night started 12th in the B, Herman Klein was 3rd in points Thursday and started 10th in the B, TK was 4th after Thursday and ended up starting 3rd in the C main on Saturday night. The changed format on Saturday clearly cost all of these drivers their guaranteed starting spots in the finale.
If the opportunity to race had been lost for both of the preliminary nights I would have been able to understand the need to completely rework the format for Saturday night. But, the results from Thursday night were "in the books". I don't even feel like Saturday night's revised format saved that much time over doing a makeup for Friday night. The preliminary portion of Saturday's event had seven 10 lap heats which equals 70 total laps of racing. The Friday night program would have been four 10 lap heats, a 7 lap dash, 15 lap B main and 30 lap A main. That's 92 laps, only 22 more total laps of racing. There would have also been qualifying but it seems to me they could have started an hour earlier and gotten through the full program. Am I missing something? Maybe there's a really good reason this would not have worked...
As I said at the beginning of this post, there was some great racing on Saturday night. That does not change my opinion that many of the top drivers unfairly lost their opportunity to race for the Fall Nationals championship this year. It seemed like "luck of the draw" was more of an influence than skill in determining the line up for the championship race on Saturday night. It was an interesting format, it created some exciting racing but it just wasn't what I expected the Fall Nationals to be...
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