“The Bud Shootout. It was an alluring race to kickoff NASCAR seasons. To qualify, a driver needed to have either won a pole in the previous season or have won the Bud Shootout previously. We [fans] were treated to a spirited race that was short on laps, deep with star drivers, and removed from points-racing. It was a pure driver’s race — for the fans — but now the Bud Shootout needs red flagged.
Budweiser dropped the pole award sponsorship beginning with the 2008 season. Coors Brewing Company picked up the sponsoring rights and re-branded the pole award. The lack of a Bud Pole Award meant the Bud Shootout qualifying structure needed revised.
The answer was to change focus from drivers and their pole awards to car manufacturers, team owners, and their drivers– in that order of priority. Notice I left fans out.
The Shootout grid will be set according to the top six teams from each manufacturer, based on the final car owner points from the previous year. If a team with an eligible driver changes manufacturers in the off-season then that driver looses his spot in the race and it goes to the next car (from that manufacturer) in the owner point standings. For example, Juan Pablo Montoya and his Dodge were set to be in the 2009 Bud Shootout. His car owner [Ganassi] has since merged with DEI and will run Chevrolets in 2009. Therefore, Montoya lost his spot and it went to the #7 Dodge of Robby Gordon.
But wait, Robby Gordon is scheduled to move from Dodge to Toyota, so it would skip to the #10 of Gillette-Evernham Motorsports.
But wait, does the #10 car even have a driver scheduled to run in 2009? It doesn’t matter because speculation has Robby Gordon racing a Dodge for the Bud Shootout and then a Toyota for the rest of the year. Huh? I don’t know which is more disturbing, that Toyota is O.K. with that, or that Robby backed into a spot in the race and is using a loop-hole to keep the spot?
The confusion is similar within the ranks of the other car manufacturers too. If that was not enough, an additional revision to the Bud Shootout gives each manufacturer a “wild card” entry. I won’t go into the full details — which will likely be revised again — but suffice it to say that it’s a drawn out scenario to get an owner with a past Cup Series champion driver into the race. No past champion? Not to worry, from this point pretty much any driver will do.
For the fans the number of laps has been increased from 70 laps to — wait for it — 75 laps, split into two segments of 25 and 50 laps. Oh for joy! They even got the segments in the wrong order. The last segment should be 25 laps!
When I attend a race I go to see the drivers. I don’t care if each manufacturer is equally represented on the track. I don’t care if the driver (or team for that matter) switched from one manufacturer to another during the off season. I don’t care if a past Cup Series champion is at the track that week, but not eligible to race the Bud Shootout based on last years [lack of] performance. I don’t even care if the eligible driver isn’t one of the superstars of the sport.
Now I understand this has always been a special race with unique requirements. But the new eligibility structure is botched from the start. Drivers who should be in the race — Newman, Bowyer, Nemecheck — aren’t. Drivers who are in the race– R. Gordon, Stremme, Sorenson, Mears — shouldn’t be. Eligibility for the Bud Shootout should remain based upon a driver’s performance on the track. The driver shouldn’t loose or gain eligibility status based on car owner changing a sticker on the nose of the car or his car number.
What was once a much anticipated race has been decimated. The Bud Shootout should be about the fans and the drivers. Until then, someone please red flag this race!
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