What is USAC going to do? Traditional qualifying, group qualifying (which was an absolute disappointment at Eldora), or will they run the Sprint Bandit format?
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Per the USAC entry form:
EVENT NO. 1 QUALIFICATIONS—Two laps to be run consecutively with the faster counting as official qualifying time.

For reference it did list "group qualifying" on the entry for Eldora, so it's looking like good ole' foot to the floor, pitch it in and pray, single car qualifying!

I wasn't at Eldora but what was wrong with Group Qualifying?

From my vantage point it seemed the cars were not that well spaced out before the green. A couple of the drivers held back and bunched up those behind him so he could have clear sailing.

Call me a purist but I personally don't like the group format. I think every car and driver combination should have their moment in the sun. Also it helps IDing who is in what car especially when the PA system isn't the best. I didn't know what car Critter Malone or Bill Rose was in until they raced their heats. Individual qualifying all the way with me.

I would rather see individual qualifying.if they have to take a little time to rework the track after quals so be it.( down with group quals. )

It works pretty well at Kokomo every week and doesn't wear out the track or take up so much time. And it eliminates the dreaded draw eveyone loves so much.

I'm with you Gregg. Friday night the WOO only had a single lap to qualify and with 44 cars I expected the track to go away rather quickly. No so. They didn't re-work the track either and added some H2O only. Saturday night on the other hand was a challenge. Even with the re-work and adding water it wasn't good. It will be wait and see what changes occur over the off season with the track surface.

I would have to think things would have been much worst without group qualies.

They ran the track in at least six times, how many would it have been with conventional qualies?

Why did the track suck so bad after being so good on Friday night?

because they sealed it when it was misting earlier in the day, pretty hard to get water down into it after that

Well 47 cars doing traditional qualifying would have been two laps, each car running an individual line. With group qualifying I believe they ran maybe 4 or 5? With drivers following each other trying to follow a better drivers line, plus the additional laps to allow each car to lay down a lap on their own without bottlenecking up puts more wear on the track. Maybe it would have been better with fewer cars? The one big problem of all was the traffic, you may have had a car that was extremely fast and he had to scrub off speed to get around another car and that changes his time. I agree with the idea of traditional qualifying. I used to help Kevin Thomas when he ran the 3R, and when local tracks starting going away from qualifying, he said "when they stop qualifying and start drawing for the 500, then we can do the same" and I agree 100 %. It may take more time, it may put some wear on the track, but it has always been like that. If they wanted to zone out qualifying completely, then I say lets do the Sprint Bandit format, but they can keep the group qualifying and never use it again.

I will reiterate and say I think part of the reason was maybe a threat of weather, but it really did not speed up the process. I think the threat of weather also had an impact on the track conditions. Maybe on Friday they just had to take what they got, and they got a really good track, on Saturday I think they may have been too conservative. It is a dirt track though, and we will have dust on occasion, so thats part of it.