Firestone Twin 275s at Texas Review and Reaction

Well I have had some time to think about it and “cool off” if you will but my thoughts on the draw are the same.  I said I would not like it and I didn’t.  The two worse case scenarios I was afraid of BOTH happened (slow or wrecked car in front with Wade Cunningham, and a fast car up front with the other fast cars in the back).  So if you look at it that was it wasn’t too bad as Wade did not cause a huge crash but you have to ask if this keeps happening is this the rule or the exception?  Will was able to “get gone” which did make for a fairly boring race number two but it was not a bad as I feared it would be either.  The two solutions put out there by drivers were: 1) Invert the field and 2) offer passing points.  Well if you offer passing points, the maximum number of points available is still based on a blind draw, which would still be extremely unfair and therefore solves nothing!  A full inversion of the field guaranties the slowest cars in the front of the field, which is a worse case scenario.  Again I give Wade Cunningham huge credit for jumping into a new (road course) car for the first time on the out side of row one and not causing a big wreck.  However, if you make that the standard and you well have a big wreck sooner rather then later.  Therefore, a full inversion also solves nothing!  If you are going to have a twin race format (which I wish they would just do away with) there are only two ways to set the field for the second race.  First, there is the "old way" which set on finishing position of the first race.  That makes it more of a competition red flag where you reset and put everyone back on the lead lap but other then that nothing changes.  Or what I think is the best idea, would be to use race one not only as a points paying race but also as a group qualifying for race two.  Therefore, the fastest lap time turned in race one would get the pole and so on.  This would still shake up the field some but would still be a legitimate way to set a grid; it is the best of both worlds!  This would have been the grid for race two if they used this system:

Just look at that and think “Oh what might have been.”  We can only hope that they put some real thought into how to reformat this race for next year.