OK, I'm going out on a limb here, so don't hang me from it when I'm done. The way I see it, the Friday night session will not go away because NHRA needs it to promote the sport. Let's face it, it's a show for the spectators and has no other purpose except to draw more first time spectators to the track, and provide a good show for those there. Very rarely does any of the performance shown on Friday night carry over to Sunday afternoon. And we all know that it makes Pro Stock qualifying a one-shot program on most occasions. So here's my wild idea. The NHRA seems to want to "borrow" ideas from other areas and incorporate them here. They are also in a bind because the Saturday qualifying TV show is the least watched and they are not getting the exposure they want. This is partly due to the fact that nothing changes after Saturday qualifying and to the casual observer, there is no real finality, or drama, to the program. So....take the top 8 in each Pro Class after the Friday night show. Give them "Immunity" and lock them into the show. (That way they can borrow from the "Survivor" show idea.) Then the balance of the cars still have 2 chances on Saturday to qualify from a clean sheet. But wait, there's more! If you have say 19 cars in a class, let the bottom six after all 3 sessions run an elimination "race" as their fourth session run to see which 3 get in the field. After the fourth session, you will still seed the cars based on the quickest ET to the slowest. As one of the crew chiefs said earlier, it would be hard to tell someone who made a good run on Friday night that they weren’t in the show, but I think if you took the top 8 after Friday night, instead of 4 from each session, as has been mentioned, that the remaining cars will stand a good chance of getting in. If 18 cars show to qualify, you have 8 locked in after Friday night, you have 6 more locked in after the 3rd session, and the remaining 4 cars will pair off to “race their way” into the show. (Does anybody else notice that this is also borrowing from another type of racing.) This would make for some more drama going into the fourth session like the TV producers want, and may even draw a few extra cars that would not have shown up before. And again, before you hang me over this, let me say that I am also an Old School fan. But I can see the writing on the wall and believe that something will be done to change the way it is now. Even after the most exciting end to a season ever, we still have this new points system. I’m just thinking if it’s going to change, I hope it changes to a way that can make it better on all the teams in some way.
