Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I raced the Nationals several times making the A main 6 times and always thought it was very unfair to award the same points for time trials as the A main. The track will slow down a bunch with 50 to 80 cars doing time trials. This was in the mid 1970's to the late 80's when they had a lot more entries than they have now and if you drew a bad # you were starting out behind the 8 ball. In the feature races everyone is on the track at the same time.

Rick Ungar

Best way to estmate how much the track fell off is to use the Maechen rule. You just figure that if Maechen times early you can count on him setting quick time (over anyone) by a tenth of a second. So quick time was a 14.8. Gotta figure if Maechen timed at same time he would have probably dropped a 14.7. His actual time going out about 40th was 15.2. So I figure track fell off .5 seconds.

To answer the question at hand, the qualifying must be that important and must award significant points. The sequence of changes that would occur by changing this element of the point system would be deeper than many realize. Fast guys would sandbag on qualifying because they wouldn't be penalized by points. They would then start up front of heats taking out the excitement of those races. This would make it harder for many of the lower budget or average teams to have any shot at a good Nationals because it would make it harder for them to transfer to a qual night feature to themselves earn more points. Some would likely stop coming. We might be left with 50 or 60 really fast cars. I would call that an Outlaw show at Knoxville I can see anytime. Some people complain that qualifying is unfair and others that the inverted heats are unfair. The great part is they make for the most exciting sprint car show in the world every year. You hit the track and you race your a$$ off. If you can't understand the beauty and perfection of this system as it is I would question whether you are a true racer or race fan.

2 of the top 5 and 5 of the top 10 in points Wednesday night came out for qualifying later than 30th in the order.

The system is as perfect as one can be to inentivise/rewards top performance across qualifying, heat, and feature combined...and fun as heck from a fans perspective.

Jamie - totally agree. If you deemphasized qualifying points I think you'd see the field tyring to see who could go the slowest during qualifying to get to the front of the heats. Qualifying might turn out looking like one of those slowest tractor contests.

The only other option would be to line everything up straight up (fast timer on pole of first heat, quickest A qualifier on pole), which would be fair based on skill, but would be incredibly boring to watch.

I still prefer the variation of the Nationals point system the World of Outlaws uses for 3 day shows: Same points for qualifying and heats, but the A-main is 250 points to win and drops by 4 points per position.

So you want the Knox Nats to be just another 3 day WoO show????

Not me, keep the points the way they are and go back to FULLY inverted heat races.

So what happened last night that you did not like or how could that be more exciting

Why would you chage anything

the only thing I would change is to add passing points and subtract points for lost positions to the current format.

It's ludicrous that a guy passing 27 cars on the night has less points than a guy who starts up front and doesn't finish the race.

The greatest knowledge is to know that you know nothing
at all.

i disagree there have been many that time very late tin time trials and end up in the top ten. seems to me one year donny was the last car to go out and set quik time.

it all boils down to how bad you want it