NASCAR Cup Series: Qualifying tweaked again ahead of Richmond weekend

NASCAR has tweaked Cup Series qualifying once again ahead of this Saturday night’s race at Richmond Raceway, the Toyota Owners 400.

Qualifying for NASCAR Cup Series races has been a controversial topic so far this season given the fact that the changes to the aero package have caused drivers to be reluctant to make their qualifying runs in anything other than a big group and reluctant to be the first driver onto the track.

This resulted in Hendrick Motorsports teammates Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott failing to reach the start/finish line to start what would have been their final qualifying laps in the third and final round of qualifying for the race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in early March.

It then resulted in all 12 of the drivers who advanced to the third and final round of qualifying for the race at Auto Club Speedway failing to record lap times in this round.

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As a result, NASCAR implemented additional penalties ahead of the race weekend at Texas Motor Speedway two weeks ago for any drivers who advance to a round of qualifying but fail to record a lap time in it and/or who prevent other drivers from going out on the track to do so.

Now NASCAR has implemented an additional tweak to qualifying ahead of this Saturday night’s race at Richmond Raceway.

All three rounds of qualifying are set to last for five minutes each. The first of these three rounds is still set to feature all of the drivers who are entered into the race while the second of these three rounds is still set to feature the fastest 24 drivers from the first round and the third and final of these three rounds is still set to feature the fastest 12 drivers from the second round,.

The change comes in the form of altered time limits to the first two of these three rounds. These two rounds have been 10 minutes each while the third and final round has been five minutes in length and has not been tweaked.

That said, this weekend’s change is only a temporary change as NASCAR seeks to implement a permanent solution for one of the hottest and most controversial topics of discussion through the first eight races of the 36-race 2019 season.

Additionally, Richmond Raceway is set to host an Xfinity Series race this Friday night, but the format of the qualifying session for this race has not been altered.

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Will this additional tweak to qualifying produce the results that NASCAR desires for the Cup Series? Will they find a permanent solution to this issue, and if so, when? The qualifying session for this Saturday night’s race is set to be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1 from Richmond Raceway beginning at 5:40 p.m. ET on Friday, April 12, and the race itself, the Toyota Owners 400, is set to be broadcast live on Fox from the track beginning at 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, April 13.

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