From the February, 2006 issue of Stock Car Insider
Last Week's Headlines
The time has come! After an eventful off-season full of driver's swapping teams, and teams swapping drivers, finally it's time to go racing. It's time to strap on your seatbelts, grab a six pack of your favorite beer, tune your TV as high as it will go and get ready for the most famous words in modern history, "Gentlemen, start your engines!".There's a lot coming up this week! First you have the Gatorade Duel featuring two 150-mile qualifying races. Does anyone out there understand how qualifying works for the Daytona 500? The Daytona 500 is the only race that where racers qualify by racing in qualifying race.
This Sunday (Feb. 12), teams actually went through qualifying the same as they do for most races. However, this qualifying only determines the starting positions in the Gatorade qualifying races. The driver qualifying 1st (Jeff Burton) starts in the pole position for the first 150 mile qualifying race while the driver qualifying 2nd (Jeff Gordon) starts in the pole position for the second 150 mile qualifying race.
Thursday, everyone will line up in the twin Gatorade 150 mile races. With the pole position for each 150 race already determined, the remaining field will be determined from the top 35 in last year's owner's points standings. The remaining non-top 35 owner's cars will be lined up by qualifying speeds.
In all, 42 teams will qualify for Daytona in this utterly befuddling qualifying system. The end result, no one cares!! We just want to see one of most exciting events in the all of the sport's world, the
Daytona 500.
