Group qualifying to get test

By Bob Pockrass

Thursday, March 02, 2006

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MEXICO CITY -- NASCAR will experiment with a new qualifying format for road courses when the Busch Series cars go out in groups Saturday at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

The exact number of groups, the number of cars per group and the time allotted for each group is still to be determined, Busch Series Director Joe Balash said today.

Each car will have its best lap used as its qualifying time. There could be four or more cars for each group, and the length of the session likely will be somewhere from five to 10 minutes, Balash said. The cars will be spread out at the start of their qualifying session.

"We'll have multiple cars out on the track at the same time," Balash said. "We're trying to see what the final entry number is, and then we'll make those [final procedural] decisions. We'll do timed intervals, that way everybody is equally spaced out."

The idea is to cut the time needed for qualifying on a road course. Balash estimated that qualifying could be completed in an hour instead of the much longer time typically required for each car to complete a lap by itself on the 2.518-mile circuit in Mexico City.

If it works, the Busch Series could use the qualifying format for future road course races, Balash said.