Shootout Diluted as Field Grows

In any given Sprint Cup race, 43 drivers and teams pack their way into and onto the track.

In the February 12th Bud Shootout, 30 drivers and teams will compete at the Daytona International Speedway.

What was once truly a shootout exclusively amongst the fastest drivers in Sprint Cup racing - until 2009, only the previous season’s pole winners and past Shootout champions were granted a spot in the race - will feature a grid only 13 cars shy of a full field. While still a prestigious race, as any event held at the Daytona International Speedway is, that prestige has been diluted as the car count has grown to and well past the 50% mark in the past three seasons.

Often times in racing, and especially with all-star events like the Bud Shootout, less is more and more is less.

To be certain, the more drivers unleashed on Daytona’s newly-repaved surface, the more opportunity for thrilling racing and the large accidents that a large sect of NASCAR fans have seemingly come to demand at superspeedways.

However, the race is no longer a Shootout among the sport’s finest and fastest competitors. It is now the Bud Free-For-All.

The pride and prestige that once went with being one of the select drivers racing the Saturday evening - and before that, the Sunday afternoon a weekend prior to the Daytona 500 is replaced by the humiliation of being one of only around fifteen or sixteen full-time competitors who didn’t get invited to the big party.

If one is going to criticize NASCAR’s stance, they must be willing to offer up a solution. One would be to make the race a “Daytona Shootout,” rewarding the top-10 finishers from the previous season’s Daytona 500 and the ten highest-finishing drivers in the Coke Zero 400 that weren’t in the top-ten in the 500 with one of twenty spots. No past champion provisionals, no wild-cards, just the 20 drivers who performed best in the two points-paying events the previous season.

And if NASCAR wants 30 drivers involved while regaining the shootout feel fans came to look forward to as the perfect thaw to a quiet winter, perhaps another format change is in order, one that would draw from the short-track roots of many of the star competitors.

The drivers could be randomly divided into three groups of ten and then draw their starting positions for their respective heat races. The three heats, perhaps 20 green-flag laps in length, would run immediately after the track had been cleared following the ARCA 200. From the three heats, a select field of 15 cars - the top-five finishers in each- would line up and race in a 30-lap, winner-take-all dash for a load of cash and beer.

With 90-laps of on-track action featuring three high-stakes preliminaries and the 30-lap feature event, the race would regain the all-out, all-star feel that was its hallmark for so many years and is but a legacy as the exclusivity of having a spot in the race has fallen aside in favor of the “more, more, more” mentality.