2015 Atlanta - QuikTrip Folds of Honor 500 - Pre Race Thread

Some comments about the Q mess.

Kenseth: "Yeah, I don't know. Obviously, they weren't organized enough to get everybody through tech it appears, so I don't know. We've got all the people up there to watch qualifying and they don't really get to watch everybody qualify, so it's kind of confusing and disappointing for sure." I'm glad they're still on last year's points instead of this year's points or probably we wouldn't have made the race either, so I'm not really sure what the issue was, but when I walked up 10 minutes before qualifying was scheduled to start and it was only 14 cars on pit road, so I have a hard time believing it was the teams."

Q) HAVE YOU EVER BEEN AT THE RACE TRACK AND NOT BE ABLE TO QUALIFY?
Gordon: "First time ever. There's a first time for everything, I guess. This is absolutely embarrassing. I just feel so bad for my guys and for 3M. To not even get a chance to go out on the race track is ridiculous. I know the fans deserve an apology. I don't know how many cars there must be back here (the garage) that never even got a chance to go on the track. I know we went through twice. When you have this many.....I've seen five or six or even 10 cars that have issues going through (tech) with certain little things. But this many cars that didn't go; that's not on these teams. And they deserve better than this. I can't believe how disappointing this is. I assume I made the race; I mean, who knows what even happened with the points and what's going on? There are guys that don't have the points that are going home that never even got a chance to even get out there. It's a big letdown for me and for our series, right now, that this happened. There is no way that this should ever happen." "There is something wrong. Or there is something wrong with the system. Or there is something wrong with the amount of time they allot to get through. There is no way this many good cars, talented people that they can't figure out how to get these cars through inspection. These guys are too smart. Yes we are pushing limits, but there is something wrong here. I'm embarrassed; I'm embarrassed for our series right now that this just happened.

From Here: http://www.jayski.com/cupnews.htm#20150228b
 
Jr. Motorsports

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Yeah they all made it through tech. A day late and hundred's of thousands of dollar's short for some teams because of Nascar's fiasco.
 
Johali said:
Danica and Jr. fans are tickled to death though. All of their major competition is in the back.
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I'm a huge Jr fan. I also root for Danica each week. I take no joy in seeing those teams not get out there to qualify. I'm also a believer that if those teams had pushed a car through the first time that passed, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Yesterday, during all of this discussion, it was said on NASCAR Radio that nobody was in line for inspection when inspection opened for Cup. That's not the norm. For whatever reason teams didn't even start through the inspection process when it was available. Starting late and having so many teams fail caused an unnecessary delay. NASCAR isn't entirely to blame for all of that crap that happened yesterday. I'd be saying the same thing if it were my driver on the bad end of this deal.

Get the car in line, get the car right the first time and get it through the inspection process. Flirt with tolerances, flirt with trouble.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
Just keep in mind that the weather forecast changes about as quick as the NASCAR Group Qualifying rules. I'm just sayin'
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Tell me about it. I've been wrestling with this thing all week. The changes in the forecast is like night and day. I called my nephew this morning and told him not to pick me up. I'm not going because I'm frustrated, just not up to it. Besides that, I feel much safer in a big old truck and my nephew has a small car. 2 hours of huddled in the back seat scares me. He has decided to take the interstate up to Atlanta and drop down to Hampton. I can't take it.

Sorry for the rant.
 
Pat said:
Tell me about it. I've been wrestling with this thing all week. The changes in the forecast is like night and day. I called my nephew this morning and told him not to pick me up. I'm not going because I'm frustrated, just not up to it. Besides that, I feel much safer in a big old truck and my nephew has a small car. 2 hours of huddled in the back seat scares me. He has decided to take the interstate up to Atlanta and drop down to Hampton. I can't take it.

Sorry for the rant.
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Never fun on the interstate in bad weather. I've done it the past two Saturday's and I'm going to be doing it again tomorrow. They are calling for 5-8 inches of snow/ice for my commute home tomorrow afternoon. A little over 120 miles of white knuckle interstate driving. Not fun. :mad: At least I'll have the race to listen to.
 
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dpkimmel2001 said:
Never fun on the interstate in bad weather. I've done it the past two Saturday's and I'm going to be doing it again tomorrow. They are calling for 5-8 inches of snow/ice for my commute home tomorrow afternoon. A little over 120 miles of white knuckle interstate driving. Not fun. :mad: At least I'll have the race to listen to.
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At least you have a large vehicle. Stay safe!
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
I'm a huge Jr fan. I also root for Danica each week. I take no joy in seeing those teams not get out there to qualify. I'm also a believer that if those teams had pushed a car through the first time that passed, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Yesterday, during all of this discussion, it was said on NASCAR Radio that nobody was in line for inspection when inspection opened for Cup. That's not the norm. For whatever reason teams didn't even start through the inspection process when it was available. Starting late and having so many teams fail caused an unnecessary delay. NASCAR isn't entirely to blame for all of that crap that happened yesterday. I'd be saying the same thing if it were my driver on the bad end of this deal.

Get the car in line, get the car right the first time and get it through the inspection process. Flirt with tolerances, flirt with trouble.
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We will agree to disagree on this one. My opinion is that Nascar screwed up and you have said yourself how one sided Nascar radio is.
 
@joeylogano

Pumped. First time I’ve ever won Cup and NXS poles the same weekend. Got two bad fast cars. Just needed and open truck seat today! Haha
 

Sprint Cup Series director Richard Buck: Teams 'pushing it' in pre-qualifying inspection

Thirteen teams failed to pass pre-qualifying inspection Friday at Atlanta Motor Speedway and failed to post a speed during group qualifying. The problems transcended the series from struggling low-budget teams to those of Sprint Cup Series stars Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart.

The Cup series director, Richard Buck, addressed questions about the problems encountered during Friday's inspection process, in which every team made it through inspection but 13 could not fix their issues in time to participate in qualifying.

Q. Richard, was there a common issue with most of the cars, or what was the predominant problem for people being unable to get through inspection?

Buck: I think we saw different areas where the teams were pushing the limits to get through it. We've got a new rules package here, and obviously the history of Atlanta and the grip is so important here, I think we've seen that with the test yesterday, teams getting to the limits, and we were open yesterday for all day on the laser inspection station and templates and such, and we had quite a few cars that came through. We did see the area of the laser inspection station where teams were pushing it, and that's their job. They're trying to get every bit that they can. We made every effort ‑‑ our goal was to make sure everybody has a fair opportunity to get through there, so our focus was to make sure that we ran ‑‑ were able to run every car across there at least once to give them an opportunity, and that's what we did.

Q. Did you consider delaying the start or increasing the length of the first round even more, and then also, there were some people who said that you kind of stopped giving out sheets of paper as far as go or no go, and they felt like you were kind of more lax near the end or once kind of the qualifying session started.

Buck: Yeah, as far as the time goes, we worked with the teams, we worked with everybody. Obviously we have partners with television and we're time certain, but we could see the trend starting to develop there, so our job was to try and work with the teams and allow them to meet the parameters, the rules that we have set in place, and so we were able to push it 15 minutes in an effort to give them as much time as we could, in answer to that question.

In answer to your second question as far as slacking off at all on that, we don't do that. We treat everybody the same. There was cars that came through there two and even a couple cars that came through three times, effort. Everybody got a fair shot at coming through there in a timely manner, and then obviously at the end, we saw the time frame and we were hustling and pushing. I was pushing all of our officials, but that pushing on the officials was ‑‑ is pushing to physically keep the same accuracy when it was a mechanical job, but the laser itself, it's automated, so there's no ‑‑ there was no difference from the first cars that went through there to the last ones.

You can read the rest here
 
NASCAR at Atlanta 2015: Could weather be improving


WILL WE RACE SUNDAY?
All eyes this week have been on the weather forecast Atlanta Motor Speedway with many asking the question, "Why make Atlanta the second race of the season at the start of March?" Honestly, I don't know why but it does make for a challenging forecast. I am going to put the odds of NASCAR racing Sunday at around 60 percent. A slight increase from previous forecast. This weather set up is very complicated and drizzle can be very hard to forecast. I think we could see enough breaks that we can go racing and at least see an official race. I am going to keep the odds of a complete race around 50 percent.


WILL THERE BE DELAYS?
With areas of patchy drizzle still possible I am not ruling out a couple weather related delays on Sunday.

more here
 
In response to group qualifying.....

"This has got to be one of the most ridiculous things we do," @erik_jones radio
 
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