Qualifying rules, provisionals have outlived purposes

Kurt Busch's solid 2007 season will allow Roger Penske to give new driver Sam Hornish Jr. a good head start to 2008. Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR

While there's at least one NASCAR driver who's having a happy New Year, most of us are left pondering one of the big questions left from 2007: What exactly is the point behind all of NASCAR's qualifying rules and provisional exceptions?

It is time for NASCAR to let go of the past.

Over the holidays, Sam Hornish Jr. received just about the greatest gift possible for someone in his shoes -- that of a new driver to a series having a hard time qualifying.

NASCAR is allowing team owner Roger Penske to swap the '07 owner points of his No. 2 car, which is driven by Kurt Busch, to Hornish's No. 77. NASCAR rules give provisional starts for the first five races of '08 to the top 35 in points from '07, then switches to the '08 standings for the rest of the season. So Hornish, who has a proven track record as an open-wheel driver but heads into his rookie NASCAR season with a history of struggling in stock cars (he qualified in just two of his eight Cup attempts last season), now is guaranteed a starting spot in the first five races of '08.

Why would Busch allow this? Well, he has another card he can use if he doesn't qualify on speed, his ex-champion's provisional.

Petty Enterprises is another team with an ex-champion driver who sometimes struggle to qualify. The team talked of switching owner points but didn't have to when Kyle Petty squeezed out the 35th spot in the standings, allowing Bobby Labonte to keep his 18th-place points.

If you ask me, NASCAR seems to be unfairly complicating things. It sure would be nice if the sanctioning body would come up with a resolution for '08 to do away with such tomfoolery. The reasons behind the rules are solid, but antiquated.

The rules were originally set up to reward those teams (and their sponsors) that showed up every week to race. The system protected the tracks, making sure that the biggest names (and draws) would be in each race.

The past champion's provisional was created to help Richard Petty at the end of his career, but had already become a bad rule by the time Darrell Waltrip was in the twilight of his career. It was tough to watch in '07 as the rule was abused by struggling teams as they kept hiring Bill Elliott and Terry Labonte out of retirement.

Deep in his heart, Dale Jarrett must not like the rule, despite the big bucks it has earned him in the past few months. Michael Waltrip hired Jarrett to get at his provisionals before the '07 season after Waltrip had landed a big contract from Toyota. NASCAR knew the situation went against the spirit of competition, so it announced before the '07 Daytona 500 that a past champion could only use six such provisionals in a season. Jarrett will once again allow Waltrip Racing to use his provisionals at the start of the '08 season, but will then retire six races into the schedule.

The truth is that NASCAR doesn't need these rules any more. Once upon a time, NASCAR, the business, needed them to help ensure that it would draw enough sponsors, fans and media to be profitable. NASCAR, the sport, has grown beyond these crutches. Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. could even miss a race or two and NASCAR would survive.

NASCAR shouldn't have to worry about the big bucks that one of its big sponsors spends through one of its cornerstone teams. These teams should be good enough with their money that they qualify for almost every race. And if these teams had to spend more time and energy on qualifying, perhaps they wouldn't dominate so easily on Sunday.

And if an underfunded underdog does overperform and knock off one of the big boys, so what? Isn't that what America was built on? Isn't that why most of us love sports?

Here in America, we love the free enterprise system. NASCAR is perhaps the most American of all sports, so why not just let the best men win. Or in this case, let the best 43 qualifiers race on Sunday.