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Wow! My inbox has been inundated with one email asking about the Fan Fare of Daytona. Actually, it was to explain the Budweiser shoot out, but I feel the entire thing needs some explanation, so here it is.

In typical American style, somebody obviously thought about - “how can we prolong the event and get more money from the punters?” And here's what they came up with. Ordinarily, a NASCAR race has 43 competitors. To keep it simple, the top 35 in the standings pre-qualify and the next fastest 8 get in. What this means is that all the drivers not in the top 35 come to each track with a car setup purely for qualifying and tend to qualify at the top of the heap, but then go slowly backwards during the race as their cars aren't setup for the long haul of say a 500 mile race. The order the drivers start in is the order they qualify in.

Not so for Daytona. That would be far too easy. So, the top 35 in points from last season automatically qualify. Qualifying is then held and this determines another 2 drives that get into the race (35 + 2 = 37). It's actually 3 that qualify, but we'll come back to that. The field in its entirety is then split in half - odd numbers and even numbers. Each half then enters what's called a “duel”. Two more cars qualify from each duel (37 + 2 + 2 = 41). The next spot goes to a former (Sprint) Cup Champion if there is one in the pack who has not yet qualified. Any remainder is filled up with the next fasted qualifiers. (As I said earlier, the third place in qualifying gets in on the basis that there would always at least one more spot to fill, but the third place in qualifying may also get in via the duels thus pushing the next people to get into the race from further down the qualifying list).

As for the starting positions for the race, only the top two positions from the qualifying session are locked in. The remaining positions are determined by the duels to create forced racing in each of the 150 mile duels (one duel filling the odd numbered spots and the other the even numbers). Otherwise, presumably the previously qualified drivers would drive one lap and then pull into the pits. This means that you could be unlucky enough to qualify third, but have a bad duel and end up starting 43rd.

All very well, but what does this have to do with the Shootout? Nothing really, other than to give you an idea of what's going on. The Shootout is a special event race. Not really sure what purpose it has other than to get the season started. Now, bearing in mind all the rigmarole above for the Daytona 500 qualifying, what is the Shootout? The Shootout is a race for all of the previous season's pole sitters (those people who started the race first by qualifying first). Oh no, if this is a race for the best qualifiers, how complicated have they made the qualifying for this race? Any idea? No, well, believe it or not, there is no qualifying, it's done on a random draw.

And America wonders why nobody else follows its sports.