NASCAR Nationwide Series Sam’s Town 300 | Las Vegas Motor Speedway Rant and Open Race Thread

Rant:

Four of the top five qualifiers for today’s Nationwide race are Cup regulars. Is it just me or do you think there should be a limit on the amount of races a Cup driver can run in the Nationwide Series regardless of whether collecting they are collecting points or not?

I mean I understand that sponsors want big name drivers in their cars and are willing to sponsor Nationwide teams with Cup drivers even if its just for a handful of races verses sponsoring a little known driver for a season on roughly the same budget.

Gone are the days that you see drivers come up through the ranks and bring a big sponsor with them along the way - unless you happen to be related to the sponsor (i.e., Menards).

It is easy for me to sit here and complain about this and offer up no solutions to fix this problem but the reality of the situation is that there is no easy fix - it there were NASCAR would have done it already.

This is a sponsor driven sport and NASCAR tried its best to maintain the integrity of the Nationwide Series by offering up the change in the way Championship points will be distributed while at the same time keeping sponsors happy by allowing Cup drivers to run any amount of races they want.

This solution is better than what we had, but it not a fix by any means.

Open Race Thread:

Starting line-up is here (via nascar.com).

See you on the other side, in the comment area of course!